Growing
by Fat Molly
Summary: Hermione is getting a bit fat, and she's starting teaching at Hogwarts. Severus Snape is actually alive, and is coming back to do research at Hogwarts. But something's changed, and he really isn't the same man Hermione once knew. In more ways than one. EWE. FAT KINK - FAT ADMIRATION - WEIGHT GAIN KINK - DON'T LIKE DON'T READ. SSHG romance. TW: mind-rape. Weight gain kink. WG.
1. Chapter 1

Hermione lay on her bed, feeling the conflicting feelings of guilt and pleasure - not just any pleasure, quite extensive pleasure.

Her belly was still growing bigger. Granted, it wasn't surprising given how much she'd been eating at the Great Hall lately, but still, the fact that her actions had tangible consequences was strangely refreshing. She felt guilt because - well, didn't everyone who put on a few feel guilty about it? But the pleasure...that was a different story.

Perhaps it was just because of her miserable experience in the ministry, where nothing she ever did made an impact irrespective of her hero status - misogyny prevented her influence from transcending from an era of war to an era of peace. Perhaps it was just because of her health-obsessed parents and their desire for their girl to have perfect teeth, perfect skin, and a perfect body. Perhaps it was just because she thought she was sexier this way, and loved the way every step she took made her little pot-belly and thickening thighs jiggle in an incredibly erotic way. Or perhaps it was all of these things.

In any case, Hermione found herself reflecting on these complicated feelings about her weight gain within the privacy of her new Hogwarts bedroom. As she contemplated this new home of hers - with its walls, painted a turquoise blue; its furnishings, old and comfortable, newly upholstered with silky velvet brocade; its living picture, a landscape reminiscent of Van Gogh's - all of it made her feel safe and comfortable.

Making this cozy domestic picture even more cozy, there was a gentle knock on the door.

"Come in," said Hermione, sitting up and straightening her robes.

Professor McGonagall - who else would it be, really? - stood outside, and she smiled faintly.

"Hermione. May I come in?"

"Of course!" exclaimed Hermione, and bustled to move some books out of her guest chair.

"Thank you," said Minerva once she was seated. "I trust your preparations are going well. Do you have any questions for me?"

"Not at the moment," said Hermione cheerfully. "I think you know I'm not afraid to ask when I do."

"I do indeed," said Minerva, "but it is my duty to ensure you know I am receptive."

"Thank you," said Hermione with a smile. "Care for a biscuit?"

"My, my," said Minerva, daintily. "Isn't everyone taking a leaf out of Albus' book. Every time I go to talk to someone, they order me to take a biscuit. My waistline can't stand that many biscuits."

"I'm sorry," said Hermione with a laugh, "if you prefer, I won't offer them to you, then."

"No, don't do that," said Minerva, "you'd better share them. Your own waistline can't stand that many more biscuits, from what I can see."

Hermione felt her hand, against her mind's will, move to her belly and grab the nice round muffin-top that had grown there the past several years.

And she shrugged, trying not to let it bother her. Honestly, the men at the ministry had been far worse about it. "Erm, sure. But let's keep it professional, shall we?"

Minerva, knowing she'd transgressed, backpedaled. "Yes. Of course. On that note," she went on, "I… I have some news that is not going to please you much."

"Oh," said Hermione, raising an eyebrow. "And what is that?"

"It's about… oh… well…" Minerva was clearly uncomfortable, and then with a deep breath she blurted out, "Severus Snape."

Hermione shrugged, but if you looked more deeply you would see that her eyes were wider, her lips parted just slightly, and her face slightly more tinged with worry. "What about him? I heard they had cleared his name. Poor man. I'll never regret anything more than I did letting him die like that."

"Yes," said Minerva, fretfully. "About that. The fact of the matter is, he isn't really dead."

"What?" exclaimed Hermione with a rush of anger and confusion leaping into her face. "Not dead? What do you mean? Are you saying he had some sort of…"

And even then, she began to piece together the truth - she'd seen Severus grasping at his lapel at some point during his...experience… and she'd not paid it any attention at the time, being too paralyzed with fear to really think about what to do.

Oh, who was she kidding. She had only been grappling with the question of whether or not she should let him die. She'd had an antidote to Nagini's poison on her person constantly for months, one of many crafts she'd made in the woods with Harry's help. With a dark lord on the loose, carrying a pet snake like that, it'd be only a fool who'd not keep some emergency kit for the eventuality that something would happen.

And, of course, there was the solution - Severus wasn't a fool, same as her. And he'd also had a potion ready and waiting for once she and Harry left the room.

She sighed. "So where's he been all these years?"

Minerva shook her head. "That I'm not really allowed to tell you much about. In fact, there's not much I know for sure. However, given his recent clear of recognition, he decided to come out of the woodwork and take up potions again."

Hermione's look of horror was all too telling, and Minerva laughed.

"Of course, my dear, he's not going to take your job. He's always hated teaching, as I'm sure you might guess. He's going to come back in a research capacity. He spent most of his time away from our world, apparently, devising some healing potions of some nature. And he's got some papers published. He wants Hogwarts to revive the old academic conferences, which was something he and Albus were always banging heads about. I see no reason not to, given the right circumstances."

Hermione sighed. "That actually sounds perfect for him."

Minerva nodded. "That's what I think. I'd never let him come back to teach. Albus was a dunce about that one. If you're going to have a double agent on your staff, don't saddle him with the full responsibilities of teaching as well. No wonder the poor man was always so irascible. He was performing two overworked, underpaid jobs for the price of one. And he hated both of them."

Hermione had never thought about that before, and she was somewhat surprised that Minerva was being so charitable when just years ago Minerva felt so betrayed by Severus' apparent defection.

She held her tongue, however.

"So I'll still be teaching my classes the way I want to," she said satisfied. "Fine, that's all I care about."

"Is it?" asked Minerva, and Hermione immediately rolled her eyes.

"God, Minerva, don't you dare."

"I do indeed dare, it's one of the finer points of being nearly a century old - it doesn't matter if I dare or do not dare, so when I feel like it, I dare!" said Minerva with a Dumbledore-esque twinkle. "So, I just want to make sure that things will not be… uncomfortable… between you and Severus."

"Oh, come on," said Hermione, and she threw herself down flat on the bed. "This was a schoolgirl crush. Nothing more. Can't you just let it go?"

"I believe," Minerva said, with a dull smile, "that you're not going to persuade me that it's 'nothing more' by acting like a spoilt toddler, Hermione."

"Well," said Hermione flatly, "I don't know what you expect me to say. I was attracted to him when I was a schoolgirl. Before I'd ever even had sex, Minerva. And since, I've barely even thought of him. Don't you dare tell me that you expect I'll go silly the moment he turns up."

(She winced when she realized she'd said barely even thought of him. Oops. Way to hide your old unresolved feelings effectively, Hermione!)

And Minerva, having made her point, got up to leave. "Anyways," she said, standing, "just thought I'd let you know right away. Forgive me," she added as she bustled towards the door, "I should admit, Hermione, that I've known he was alive and returning for some time now. I delayed so long in telling you because I just couldn't stand to see you run away because an unpleasant old face showed up again."

"So you waited until my syllabi were all drawn up and confirmed," said Hermione with a dashing smile. "Very well, Minerva. I think that was prudent, but please know it shouldn't have caused you any worry. I'm an adult, and as long as he behaves himself, I'm sure we'll get along just fine. Thank you for the chat, see you at lunch."

"My pleasure," said Minerva, "and thanks for the biscuit. But please, dear, don't eat anymore yourself - you don't need them."

"See you later," said Hermione blandly. And as soon as the door clicked shut, she picked up a biscuit right then and there and began eating it with relish.

She wasn't precisely pleased to see Severus, but it sounded like he had got his act together, and wanted to get some activities that would benefit both her and their profession well. She could at least be supportive.

(chapter 2 coming soon!)


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2 - Growing

Hermione was, despite herself, and despite her disavowals to McGobagal, eager to see her old professor. Perhaps it was just because she had left him on such a regretful note. Perhaps it just was the fact that she was eager to see him in a new light - as a colleague, a fellow potions specialist. Perhaps it was just out of reminiscence - she remembered he was a world-class asshole, but somehow she felt like he couldn't have been that bad. It was somewhat endearing, as far as she remembered. (And, honestly, she commisserated with his frustration with dunderheads.) Of course, she told herself, it was *not* because of her (former!) crush on him. Such would be silly.

The day he was slated to arrive, she was disappointed not to see him. He was not at lunch, breakfast, or dinner. The next day was the same - no sight of him.

With a week before the start of term, she was beginning to despair of seeing him at all, much less getting to talk with him. In her state of worry, she automatically assumed that once term started, she'd never see him - and thus her only chance to convene with him was during this first week.

Then, the third day, she was early to the Great Hall for breakfast. Only Pomona Sprout and Madam Hooch were there, keeping their covert romantic breakfast-dates as they'd been doing for the past fifty years, so they could hold hands without attracting the less mature students' attention.

But someone was there who wasn't supposed to be there - an unfamiliar figure doing its best to slink in and out of the hall unnoticed with a plate piled high with food, and pockets bulging besides.

Hermione was incredulous as she watched the rotund and truly fat Professor Snape - previously the svelte and lithe Professor Snape - debate between two flavors of pastry, considering them both equally, with a forefinger on his pursed lips. Unable to decide, he grabbed them both and shoved them in his pocket. Then, for good measure, he grabbed an extra and took a bite out of it right then and there.

And then, feeling eyes on him, he turned. And - despite all past empirical evidence that he was as cold blooded a fish as any that had ever walked the halls of Hogwarts - he blushed furiously red.

But as was his talent, he suppressed his mortification as soon as it began to show, and as he was singularly capable, he completely reversed the situation to make it appear that it was Hermione who had been embarrassed, not him.

"Miss Granger," he said, as if she were an uninteresting speck of porridge on the floor, "I heard you would be here on staff." His voice was even deeper than she remembered it, and it rumbled out of him powerfully, like a burst of highly-pressured water coming out of a mess of old pipes.

"Many congratulations to you. You've discovered the world is too harsh a place for your fragile ego and you've come back to Hogwarts to console yourself amongst the familiarity of books and learning. I'm frankly surprised that you did not take on the role of second-wind student before now; it seems your naïveté was worse than I imagined." With that, he took a few wolfish bites of his pastry, as if daring her to comment on his choice of breakfast.

Any illusions that Hermione had had regarding her old professor came crashing down at this moment. Yes. He really was more awful than she remembered. And no, he was not going to be kinder to her as a teacher than she was a student.

And yes, his words stung because he was right, at least in respect to her naïveté. (She should have known better than to try and change the world.)

"Good morning to you too, you old grump," she said with a flash of nervousness. Granted, she wished she could be more venomous, that she could compete with him in a battle of cruel wits - but he had years of practice, and she was genuinely kind of heart, if resentful at times.

Still, even this small retaliation brought forth a combination of fear and exhileration. It was a fascinating and strange feeling to be disrespectful to a professor - much less Severus Snape.

He glared at her sternly. But she didn't feed into his haughty attitude - he was giving her just enough rope to hang herself, and she wasn't interested.

Overall, she was just disappointed.

As he seemed to be waiting for her to say something else, she decided she wasn't going to bother postponing her breakfast any longer. She turned her back, flounced over to the table, and sat herself down smack in the center - the place she could be concurrently farthest from Pomona and Rolanda, as well as Snape.

Snape appeared mildly surprised. For a moment, he focused again on the pastries on the table in front of him, then looked torn between escaping and continuing to needle her. Given the innate bully that he was, he opted for the latter.

He scooped up another pastry and sat down at the table directly next to her, going significantly out of his way. Which in and of itself was strange, Hermione noted. It looked like he was indeed planning to talk to her. Though heaven knew why!

"So," she said helping herself to a serving of scrambled eggs that was fully intended to satiate her until lunch, "You're doing research."

"Yes," he responded, as if he was trying to decide if she were testing him.

"I'm honestly glad," she said, pointedly not making eye contact. "You didn't seem to enjoy teaching. Either that, or you enjoyed it too much."

His stomach audibly gurgled by way of an answer, and he very carefully pulled a small vial of what looked to be antacid pills out of his sleeve, poured three into his hand, and then took them dry, clapping his hand to his mouth carelessly.

"Sure," he said, by way of response to what she said. He still sounded hesitant, as if he was expecting her to say something sharp to him.

She tried to take a bite of her eggs, but couldn't stomach them until she got the obvious elephant out of the room. Without looking up, she began. "I… I must tell you," she said awkwardly, "I'm… I'm really sorry I didn't try to do something when I saw you last."

And she couldn't look up at him. So she kept staring at her eggs, stirring some clumps them in the scattered salt she'd put on the side of her plate.

"Well." Snape sounded mollified, if not somewhat amused. "Given what you knew, it seems unsporting to have expected anything else from you. Moreover," and now he sounded genuinely curious, "what on earth could you have done?"

Hermione shrugged.

"I had a potion on me that would have, at least I thought at the time, worked against the poison in your system."

"What was its composition?" His tone was crisp, objective. She felt immediately as if she were a teenager back in his potions class.

"Brown ochre as a platelet tag, willow bark as a blood thinner, syrlinase as a toxin absorbtion inhibitor, microsilicone as a conduit, essence of bezoar as an agent, paraffin as a preservative, bound by arithmantic spells that I adapted from the Apparentless Lesion potion."

She looked up, automatically searching his face for his begrudging approval.

He merely kept one eyebrow raised, expectantly.

"And I know now, it wouldn't have worked," she said, head sinking. "I figured out a few years ago - this would have worked well for an emergency anti-lycanthropy potion, with the addition of wolfsbane and balancing the dynads accordingly, but of course it wouldn't have helped with a reptile's venom. In my defense, I came up with this hodgepodge brew with inadequate resources: all I had were two books with any notes on venoms and toxins, and one had an extensive section on mammalian rabies and similarly transmitted diseases, and other was a book on spiders."

Snape just looked at her with the same curious, smirking gaze, which made Hermione feel like she had just failed.

Therefore, she was floored when he said, "And this is why we need honors-level courses at this institution. It baffles my mind, to this day, why Albus thought it was remotely appropriate, from a basic educational point of view, to let someone like you struggle to remain engaged and interested in a class dumbed down to meet the needs of someone like Potter. I tried to teach to the median of the class - but when the median was so unclear, it was all I could do to keep you all from exploding yourselves every day."

He sighed, and visibly let his guard down, his shoulders slouching and his belly's rolls pooching in front of him as his posture loosened. "Fortunately, Minerva won't stand for that kind of nonsense. Nor will you, I hope. I am confident that between the two of you, Hogwarts will regain its standing as an institution of actual repute."

He took a bite of the rashers and kidneys from his plate, then tidily dabbed the corner of his mouth. "Then again," he said, thoughtfully, "perhaps Hogwarts' reputation was all a grand illusion from the start, if the likes of Albus Dumbledore was allowed to remain in power as long as he did."

"Oh," Hermione said, catching her bearings. She was still reeling at the fact that Professor Snape thought she was honors-level material. "Well, as it happens, I did some research about that. Turns out he was breaking all sorts of codes, coaxing loopholes around him and such. Nothing he was doing was anything more than technically legal by the letter of the laws set down by the founders. After all, how could he be in accordance with their values with such an autocratic reign as his was? Traditionally, there's supposed to be at least two head-masters at any given time, though in the times of greatest economic bounty, the ideal was to have four, one for each house, with no single person sewing together their differences."

"Hm," Snape said, taking a few more careful, slow bites of his food, as if he was afraid she was going to take it away if he ate too fast. "I did not know this. I can't even imagine what that would have been like. Where'd you learn that?"

"Restricted section," said Hermione glibly. "There was all sorts of reading banned at a whim by Dumbledore. It's pretty sickening, really, how much he relied on ignorance to reinforce his strictures."

"In almost every way," Snape said blandly, "he was a sick, sick man."

Their eyes met in intense agreement.

"On my part, I… I can't even imagine what it must have been like, to be emotionally manipulated by him for so many years," said Hermione softly, without realizing what she was saying.

Snape's face grew dark, and he stabbed pointedly at a bite of kidney.

"On my part," he snapped back, "I can't even imagine what it must be like to live a normal life where the rest of world doesn't know my secrets."

"I- I'm sorry," said Hermione, backpedaling immediately.

"Moreover," Snape went on, his face curled into a snarl, "I can't even imagine what it have been like to have been the best friend of Harry Potter, the petulant arse who wasn't supposed to live past his usefulness as a pawn in Albus' great drama for the greater good."

With this, Hermione stood up, grabbing her plate. "And this is my cue to leave. Goodbye. Enjoy your miserable bitter life."

Snape rolled his eyes. "Stop being indignant. When's the last time he even called you?"

Hermione bit her lip. She didn't even remember herself. Was it a few months? A few years?

"What does it matter to you?" she responded hotly. "I prefer the friend who thinks fondly of me but sucks at keeping in touch to my ex-professor who can't respect one of the nation's greatest heroes - who also just happens to be my closest friend."

He looked at her, and laughed sadly.

"Well then. I guess that's fair." He began to pick at his food, and again his stomach rumbled.

Hermione decided to sit down again. "Why aren't you eating?" she asked, frowning. "It's going to get cold."

He turned and gave her a dead-on look. "Seriously?" he asked, clearly incredulous that she would encourage him to eat.

She stared back at him, unfazed. "You're obviously hungry. Don't hold back on my account. Far be it for me to judge you."

Casting a side-glance at her, he proceeded to eat, though conservatively. Hermione could tell he lusted after another plate or two. Heaven knows she herself was hungry enough for a second serving.

Deciding that, in fact, she'd go ahead and get that second serving, she stood and made a gesture towards his plate. "Want me to spoon you some more?"

Snape muttered, "I've heard that one before," under his breath, which made Hermione almost drop her plate with a giggle.

He didn't actually answer for a moment, as he seemed to survey the damage on her plate, the expanding pudge at her middle, and the amount of food left at the staff serving-table.

Then, with a nod, he pushed his empty plate towards her. "No potatoes," he said, by way of instruction.

Hermione, feeling gratified - as though somehow she'd been allowed entrance into some deep secret place in his mind - went and served him several generous scoops of everything there was on the table, with a couple extra pastries on the side.

He didn't say anything other than a grunted, "Thanks," when she brought it back, but she saw he attacked it ravenously, and once in a while as he ate, he cast her a mysterious glance - whether it was one of appreciation or disgust, she could not tell.

Of course, she was also watching him as she was eating. It was hard to keep her fingers attached to her fork and knife, away from the succulent love-handles that he'd grown, the ponderous overhang that spilled over his trousers, and the thick double-chin that threatened towards a third. It was even harder to keep her eyes away from his bulging stomach, with its growing folds and ripples that wiggled seductively every time he leaned forward to take a big bite of pastry over his plate.

She ate, he ate, and they covertly looked at each other.

Then, just as suddenly as they'd begun their conversation, they left the Great Hall, headed their separate ways.


	3. Chapter 3

She didn't see him again for over a week, though truly she was not trying to find him. She had plenty on her mind aside from the strange new changes to her ex-professor.

Unlike some gifted folks, Hermione was a genuinely good teacher, and she used her prep time to its fullest advantage. Not to mention having a time-turner again made her dizzy with delight - of course she'd known that all the teachers had one - how else could they teach so many sections each? - but she was only beginning to appreciate the use of one as a professor.

And as she dashed around completing tasks, she found herself gaining weight at an alarming rate. Almost every other real-life day - which given her heavy turner usage was the equivalent of nearly 36 hours - she felt her body a little different. Usually it was softer, or the accumulating fat had shifted somewhat. Overall she felt increasingly satisfied with herself - she was working hard, engaged, excited, and happy. And with every added ounce, she felt like it was just that much more evidence of her incredibly comfortable and enjoyable life.

And other people were noticing.

She didn't see Snape for nearly a week in real life, possibly because, in Hermione's opinion, he had rendered himself slightly too vulnerable in their last conversation. In her mind, he was deeper than he let on, and while she felt complicated feelings about him - specifically regarding how much of an asshole he was - she found herself retracing her old, convoluted, matted thoughts that his bite must be a protective effort to prevent his soft underbelly from being exposed and violated.

Though, granted, that metaphor was particularly apt these days.

She next encountered him in the great hall, as last time she had seen him, he was doing the same thing as before, filling his plate and pockets and looking like he was ready to dash.

"Miss Granger," he said, his mouth crawling into an intimidating smile. (He seemed to be doing this particular gesture a lot lately , Hermione realized. Snape smiling in any capacity was odd.)

"How are you finding the time turning life?" asked Snape when she saw him next. He was grinning at her in a predatory manner as she helped herself to what was effectively her third breakfast of the day (though her body was craving dinner).

"Completely enjoyable," said Hermione, settling down and helping herself to generous portions. "Though annoying that I can't come downstairs and see your pretty face for breakfast three times over. I don't like eating in my office alone. But you know the story. Quantum mechanics and all that."

"Ah ," said Snape with a smile that said he knew full well she didn't think his face pretty, but he was going to hold her to her words someday. He also was clearly unsure whether or not he intended to sit with her.

She made the choice easier by patting the place at the table next to her. "Join me?"

He gave a horselike grunt and sat with her. She particularly enjoyed the view of him spreading his legs wide enough to accommodate his belly, so that he could successfully stuff his stomach under the table.

"So why is that," he asked, noncommittally, "why don't you like eating in your office alone?"

She knew the reasons well, of course, but she was figuring out that interacting with Snape was a kind of art form.

Therefore instead of launching into an enthusiastic analysis, she shrugged with affected ennui. "I count meals as social time. When I can't, it means that I'm not getting that needed boost of social energy."

"I see." He pursed his lips and said nothing else, just analyzing her.

"So tell me," Hermione said, feeling like talking to him was like pulling teeth, "do you use the time turner these days?"

"Never," he answered, in a slow drawl. "At least not in my dotage. No need to, after all. Experiments and explosions, they rush for no person."

"Wouldn't you still be able to use them," Hermione said brightly, "for when you're writing on a deadline? I certainly like that flexibility."

Snape shrugged. "Honestly," he said with a scowl, "I just don't enjoy using time turners. They always make me feel like I'm going to chuck my bile on the head of the next poor sod who cuts me off in the hallway. Thus they thoroughly take away my appetite."

This was another subtle little test, and Hermione could tell, because he seemed to be daring her to riff off of his weight. He stared at her with the audacity of a London rat that had been caught in a pantry. So what, he seemed to say, you're the fool in this situation. I'm perfectly at peace with what I am - how this conversation goes is entirely on you .

And while Hermione was not sure how she would react to a rat in her pantry, staring her down, she was not repulsed by Snape and his diehard attitude.

Instead of turning his weight into the joke he seemed to expect, she said, congenially, "So that's why you used to be so skinny, then."

He seemed inordinately pleased at this response. "Yes and no," he said with more congeniality than she could have guessed he would reciprocate, "I've always eaten a lot, except when I used the time turner. It's just my metabolism that's caught up to me."

"Well, I guess I'm suffering the same fate," Hermione said, struggling not to blush.

"How strange," Snape said, sounding bored. "I assumed women were a monolithic group who could only be thin by starving themselves or something."

"Some, I guess," Hermione said, not sure if he was serious or not. "Maybe I'm different, but I never starved myself."

"Hoo fucking ray," he responded, but his bite was not as frosty as usual. "Now tell me," he said, appearing thoroughly fatigued of the conversation, "Is your curiosity surrounding my ample size subdued to a more decent level, or are we going to have to keep chit-chatting about it all day?"

What a strange question. Startled, Hermione turned her head and found herself meeting Severus face to face - how he'd got himself in that position so soundlessly, she had no idea. But either way, she felt her most recent thoughts swimming to the surface of her mind - oh no!

Feeling her face grow hot, she saw the swarm of thoughts that had sprung to mind the moment he asked about the state of her curiosity.

And oh - these were dirty thoughts.

She had three involuntary fantasies that had come to mind. First, she'd had the fantasy of shoving him back in his chair, ripping off his pants, and sucking him dry right there in the Great Hall. She saw herself on her knees, tucking her fingers under the folds of his magnificent belly and grabbing it by the sides, putting her lips on his plump throbbing member. She saw him rear back in ecstasy, his face taut and hot as his body contracted and flexed with pleasure. She saw herself stroke his belly and cover his member with a liberal amount of sweet rosehip jam, which she licked off with pleasure.

The second scenario involved her plump body, bare on the table, and Severus in an authoritative position, efficiently gathering ingredients while keeping her clit tightly squeezed between two of his meaty, strong fingers. Then he began to feed her, bite after bite of rich corn bread stuffing, giving her a delightful squeeze of pleasure every time she swallowed. This meant that she was constantly on the edge of coming, but never quite there, no matter how fast she ate. And once it seemed she had eaten every bite she could fit into her body, he gathered salts, spices, and oils and began to massage her great fat belly and every other spot of skin on her body, as if preparing her to be shoved in an oven. He also put an apple in her mouth, which she could suck the juice of. She moaned with pleasure at these sensations until he finally disrobed himself and began to fuck her, and she was stuffed in every conceivable way, doing her best to not scream with pleasure (lest she lose the apple).

And then there was the coup de gras - Hermione imagined herself a hundred pounds fatter, her body jiggling with every movement, and Severus was licking her cunt, flowery-white with whipped cream and syrup, as she ate grapes and chocolate-covered berries. She was reading aloud from a book of incredibly sexy literature. A relatively famous book of gay literature, as it happened, about two fat men eating and fucking each other while reading, a la Tristan and Isolde. (In short, fucking and eating while reading about another couple fucking and eating that was reading about another couple fucking and eating). And somehow this seemed to intrigue them both so much that Hermione had to put the book down, and Severus fucked her as she lay there on the couch, both of them sweating with the effort but pleased by the end of it.

All of these were conveyed in the blink of an eye, and Snape seemed both fascinated and repulsed by what he'd found.

"How utterly complex," Severus the non-fantasy person said, and stared into Hermione's eyes with a strange fire of passion that she'd only seen in movies.

It seemed like he was about to kiss her. And Hermione probably would have kissed him back, if he had.

But as the fog of desire drained away, she realized what had just happened, and she dropped her fork.

"That," she said breathlessly, "that was not okay."

"You seem pretty okay to me," said Snape cooly, going back to his food with measured caution.

"No," she said, and she stood. "That was not okay, Severus Snape. That was not okay. Bad man." She said this as if she were scolding a dog - but she didn't really know how else to convey the seriousness of the situation to him. She knew Snape had a habit of violating peoples' minds - at least Harry's - but she didn't think he would do this with a colleague.

She had the sinking feeling that, no, he just didn't see her as his colleague. He saw her as an upstart trying desperately to justify her existence to a world that was neutral towards her.

Hadn't he said as much the other day?

With that, she collected her bag and raced out of the Great Hall.

She didn't know what he thought he was, but he wasn't going to be able to get away with this.

…...


	4. Chapter 4

Predictably, Hermione was not hungry any more. She found herself in McGonagall's office, and her emotions were wavering between righteous anger and blubbery sobs.

McGonagall's response was to reluctantly push Albus' old bowl of lemon drops towards Hermione. Despite what she knew about Dumbledore's unfortunate two-faced decision-making, she still felt a fondness for him swell up as she contemplated the bowl, then took two drops and put them in her mouth.

"I suppose I understand why Albus kept these," McGonagall said with some distaste. "It saves one the trouble of getting up and offering someone a hug."

"I guess you haven't figured out how to get rid of them, it seems," Hermione said, taking a deep breath while sucking on the drops.

"No chance," said the headmistress with a sigh. "They seem to never end. Even when I had Neville in here the other day, and he stuffed himself silly with them out of nervousness - I could swear he ate a gallon of them, and yet the supply never grew small."

"Wait," Hermione said, finding herself smiling despite what had just happened downstairs. "Is Neville joining the staff?"

"Yes," said McGonagall, "though heaven knows why I hired him. I swear, if his grandmother didn't frighten me so much, I probably wouldn't have even seen him for an interview."

Hermione laughed. "He's a Hufflepuff at heart," she said, "so at least he'll be hardworking and helpful."

"So it would seem," said McGonagall dryly. Then she went on, standing to play around with the potted plants she'd been letting take over her office, "now that you're a bit more composed - what happened with Severus?"

"He - used legilimency on me," said Hermione, her voice dropping low in a confused mix of shame and anger at Snape.

"Explain." McGonagall was impassive.

"I mean," Hermione said, trying to stand up for herself, "we were talking, and he asked me suddenly a fairly inappropriate question, and he was suddenly looking into my eyes, and he saw a bunch of very - very private thoughts. And when I told him that he could not do that, he told me that I looked like I had enjoyed it, and dismissed me. So I came up here. So," she said, feeling a bit breathless, "that's what happened."

"I see," said McGonagall, thinking for a moment. Then, leaning primly forward, she asked, "So what was it that you were talking about?"

Hermione felt her face flush a thousand times over. She wasn't about to tell her mentor - and the person she respected most in the world - what they'd been talking about, at least she wasn't going to tell without thinking about it for a moment.

"Well," she said, stalling and gathering her thoughts, "erm."

"Was it sexual?" asked McGonagall without an inch of sympathy.

"Erm," Hermione said, and tried to think back to the moment. It certainly had felt sexual by that point, but whether or not this was because of what was actually said or the feeling of the conversation, she couldn't tell.

"In that case," said McGonagall, not bothering to wait for Hermione's explanation, "I don't see what you're making such a big fuss about. Just take it as a compliment, if you're not happy about it. Or else just go and lay with him already. It's not like you're both teenagers. I've got better things to do than arbitrate your petty squabbles."

Hermione's respect for McGonagall sunk instantly. "But… but it's an issue of consent," she moaned, wringing her hands. "It was a violation of my privacy. Of my mind. And he doesn't seem to care. How on earth am I supposed to take that as a compliment?"

McGonagall sighed with aggravation, picked up a stack of papers, thrust them in Hermione's hands, and ordered, "If you must make a fuss about this, you can fill out this paperwork, and we will proceed as laid out in the staff manual."

Hermione took the papers and said nothing, not sure what to do at this point.

McGonagall stared at her. "Now, unless there's something else you've got to tell me," she said with an air of closing the conversation, "Please do go find something else to do. Someone I know submitted a thirty-page syllabus and I'm only at page five."

There was a twinkle in her eye - of course Hermione was the one who had submitted said syllabus - and Hermione momentarily found herself outside the office.

Sobered, she went back to the dining hall. It was clear that McGonagall was not going to be her ally for this fight.

She'd have to do this on her own.


	5. Chapter 5

Hermione looked at the stack of papers on her bureau bleakly. The experience of being shot down so readily by McGonagall - who truly should have known better - made her feel absolutely crummy. A week after the incident, she was still hurt by the incident, and found herself taking to her bed as soon as she could after work. She wasn't using the time-turner much anymore, aside from when absolutely necessary to teach her classes at the same time. She also was barely eating.

Eating was, for her, fundamentally a symptom of enjoying her life. At this time, she simply wasn't able to enjoy it.

She was angry and resentful towards Snape for feeling like he was entitled to look into her mind when he pleased to. She was angry that she'd let him get close enough to her to steal into her mind like he had. She felt angry that she felt guilty for making a big deal out of something that shouldn't, apparently, be a big deal.

But most of all, she felt angry because this sort of thing was *exactly* why she had left the Ministry and come back to Hogwarts in the first place.

Not to bore you with a long story - suffice it to say that Hermione had been the recipient of unsolicited legilimency more than once during her time at the ministry. Amongst the more skilled wizards - because this truly was a male wizard thing, not a female witch thing - she'd been forced to submit her mind over and over for 'mind clearing' checks and similar arbitrary experiences on the parts of her surperiors.

One particularly traumatizing set of events was when she was passed over for a deserved promotion, and the man who had formerly been her intern became her boss. While Frederick had been incredibly sweet as an intern, as her boss he was a nightmare. And he demanded that Hermione regularly give him entry to her mind as a way of ensuring that she wasn't planning to seduce him and take back the seat of power she'd had over him. (As if she cared that much.) As part of his unfortunate delusional complex, he'd dominated her thoroughly, without her consent, starting with small things, and finally taking her mind and forcing her to accept his doing as many horrible things to it as he could think of.

She'd initially submitted to it out of a desire to maintain her position and keep doing the good things she was doing in the public advocate's office. But finally, she realized she wasn't doing as good of work as she used to do, she was dispirited, and too unhappy to do a good job. Realizing that she didn't need to submit herself to his abuse, she quit.

She hadn't described what had happened to McGonagall when she came knocking at Hogwarts' door for a position - after all, she was trying to make a good impression - and since her hiring, she'd never bothered to clarify what had happened at the Ministry of Magic that had made her leave.

She hadn't felt like she needed to worry about this kind of thing happening here. But here it was, starting all over again.

Men. She hated them. And she hated that McGonagall - who could have disciplined Snape - wouldn't even acknowledge his trespass.

She was absolutely irate. Partially her anger was directed at herself, for having stuck with Frederick and his shenanigans for so long. But also, she was angry at Snape, and she knew she could do something about it, now, so she was going to. At least she would try.

But for the moment, it was easier to take a step back from the situation and self-medicate by taking herself to bed every day, wrapping herself in warm blankets, and sometimes screaming, sometimes crying.

In truth, she hadn't ever given herself time to mourn and grieve for what had happened at the Ministry - she'd never gotten a chance to allow herself to feel the pain of being violated like she had been by Frederick, to allow herself the space to cry about having lost her dreams and visions of doing good for the downtrodden of the world, to allow herself to refresh and relax and be comforted by the things around her.

No, she hadn't had a chance to process what had happened at the Ministry, not really. She'd lept from one job into a feverish search for another job, then jumped headfirst into this job. There'd been no time to process her experiences.

And now, she was finding that all her effort to suppress her feelings were catching up to her. It was immensely more painful than it should have been, but then again, she didn't exactly have any support in the situation.

She did think about calling Harry, but knew that Ginny would do her best to block her husband from speaking with Hermione. And Ron... well, how did one talk with the former-boyfriend-who-you-pretended-to-have-dumped-but-who-actually-had-dumped-you about one's deeper life issues? Ron had to deal with a family that judged every move he made, and she'd been happy to take the blow for him, since she knew they'd never give him peace if it was revealed that he had dumped Hermione.

Anyhow. Here she was, fairly isolated and alone. What could she do?

Well, for the moment, she slept.

Until one night, as she was curled up on her couch under the fluffiest blanket in her flat, there was a knock on her door.

Of course, she knew it was Minerva. "Just a moment," she called, pulling her blankets awkwardly, sloppily around her and treading to the door. She wasn't wearing anything more than underwear underneath, but then again, it as nearly midnight on a weeknight, and Hermione felt like she had the perfect right to be wearing nightclothes if she chose.

Well. As you might guess, she regretted it as soon as she opened the door.

Severus Snape stood there, looking practically crestfallen. His brow was furrowed and his face was taut.

"Miss Granger." He seemed afraid to even look at her, dressed scantily as she was, and he cast his eyes to the floor.

"Erm. Hi." Hermione wondered where on earth all her feelings of anger had gone. As she regarded her former professor, she no longer felt the burning pinch of anger in her upper gut that she'd been growing for the past week. Instead, she felt - well, strangely, she felt like she wanted to invite him in for a cuppa. "Erm. What are you doing here?"

"I wanted to speak with you," he said, clearly ashamed. "Do you have a moment?"

"Sure," she said, despite herself, "come in, please. There's... erm... hold on a moment."

She went to her ice-box and pulled out a package of biscuits that hadn't been opened yet. They were chocolate sponge biscuits with raspberry inside, and they were cool to the touch.

She picked up a pitcher of milk left over from her dinner - she'd eaten upstairs this evening, to avoid meeting her time-turner counterpart downstairs - and brought two cups into the living room. Then she seated herself on the sofa. Snape had settled himself into her big comfortable armchair, and he was idly skimming the pages of the book she'd left between its cushions.

"A brief history of rape," he read the title carefully, then put the book respectfully on the side table. He looked even more admonished than when he'd first walked in.

Hermione didn't know how to respond, so she merely pushed the pitcher of milk, the plate of biscuits, and the cup in his direction.

"Please," she said, as he looked hesitantly at them.

With a look of feeling somewhat relieved, though still uncomfortable, Snape poured himself a glass of milk, took a biscuit, tossed it in his mouth, and washed it down with the grim determination of a warrior fortifying himself for battle.

"So, *colleague,*" Hermione said, a fierce note in her voice, "What can I do for you this evening?"

He looked even more chastened than before. "I believe I owe you an apology," he said slowly.

"For what?" asked Hermione, not because she didn't know, but because there was a certain satisfaction in hearing him say it.

"For... for taking advantage of you when you were defenseless," said Snape, and he stared down at his giant belly with more sadness than Hermione thought could exist in the world. (For the record: she noticed it was bigger than when she'd last seen him. Not much, but visibly.)

He added, "I don't expect you to forgive me," he said, not looking at her, "particularly since it took me this long to get my sodding arse up here to apologize. But if you could do me the honor of listening, I'd like to provide some small explanation - not as an excuse, since what I did was truly inexcusable, but so that you can understand my half of the situation."

Hermione sat there, and only realized that he'd been intending for her to respond when he looked up at her, fear in his face that she wasn't going to forgive him. And she said, uncomfortably, "Oh, erm, carry on then."

He sighed. "I just want to stress to you how strange it's been, coming back into the wizarding world. I don't know if you knew this, but I spent the entire time I was out of the world, I lived and breathed life as a Muggle. I rented an apartment in the outskirts of London. I dated. I scraped together a non-magical living. And after a while, I got so comfortable there, that I somewhat forgot the intricacies of what life is like when you have magic at your disposal."

He took a deep breath, and seemed ready to conclude. "In summary - it's been a bit of a culture shock, returning to the wizarding world. And since my entire life prior to leaving, I was a spy - well, I've been struggling against those instincts ever since I set foot in these wretched halls."

He lowered his head and appeared to prostrate himself before her.

Hermione was so flabbergasted by this entire conversation that she could barely think of a response. Though luckily for her, she had one come to mind.

"Erm. So. Erm. What brought on this change of heart, exactly? You seemed completely fine with what you did last week."

Severus looked up at her, and his face visibly softened into something that strangely - so, so strangely - made her want to cuddle him like a podgy stuffed bear.

"Erm. My girlfriend?"

He did not seem exactly pleased to be admitting he wasn't single, though there was a significant amount of pride and happiness in his voice that made his story plausible.

"What?" asked Hermione, actually finding herself disappointed. "Who is she? God, don't tell me it's Trelawney."

"No," he responded with a gag, and his face shifted back into something more recognizable. "No, no. Erika's not here. She's in Boston."

"Is... is she a Muggle?" asked Hermione, beginning to realize the significance that all this seemed to have. And he nodded in assent.

Severus Snape had a girlfriend. Severus Snape had a MUGGLE girlfriend. Severus Snape had a MUGGLE (AMERICAN?!) girlfriend.

This, and Severus Snape had gotten fat.

Surely there had to be some relationship between these two things.

In any case, Hermione swallowed the disappointment that was making her throat feel tight. "So your girlfriend. She's a Muggle. And she's in Boston. How exactly did she change your mind?"

"Oh." Snape smiled sadly. "I... I was just describing to her what had happened. I was gloating over it, actually, and then she gave me an earful as a response. It took me a few days for the message to sink in, but she refused to talk to me until I listened to reason, so...that's what happened." He appeared sad and self-deprecatingly angry. "I do always go and botch up things," he said in a sad lament.

Hermione, however, noticed there was something strange in his story. "I hear you. But one question - exactly *how* are you able to talk with your Muggle girlfriend in Boston?"

Snape perked up at the question, apparently having feared a worse one about to roll off her tongue. "Well, as it happens, I just got the electronics wards down. You know how electronics have never worked in Hogwarts? Well, that's changed now. I finally figured out the trick to Albus' old anti-electronics spells. For such a progressive man in some ways, he was also quite the luddite. But then again, we both know it was part of his larger scheme to control everything. Chances are, it helped us survive the war, in the long run."

And then, as Hermione stared at him incredulously - he'd just casually unraveled yet another one of Dumbledore's lies, one that could have made her life incredibly and dramatically different - and even as she stared at him bewilderedly, Snape reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone.

He flipped it open, and on the screen flashed a recently-received text message, from someone named Erika Holmes: a less-than sign next to the number three.

Hermione stared at it. "It's... it works?"

"Yes." Snape typed a response, clicked send, and showed it to Hermione as it processed the text message and, in a moment, blinked 'Text sent!'

The text he had sent was a smiley-face.

A SMILEY-FACE. Severus Snape was in the habit of sending SMILEY-FACE text messages to his AMERICAN MUGGLE GIRLFRIEND.

Oh, and Severus Snape had gotten fat. She couldn't forget that.

Hermione wasn't sure whether she should laugh or cry. So much new information.

"So," she said, gathering her blankets more closely around her, as she felt her mood sink dangerously low, "What did she say that made you think otherwise?"

Snape seemed to consider his options. Finally settling on one, he seemed to get shy all of a sudden, and pull himself back up into a more dignified, snobby position.

"She's a trauma survivor," he said slowly, carefully, as if he'd practiced saying this in the bathroom mirror. "She was raped when she was fifteen and has gone through the full gambit of issues that come from that since then."

"Erm," said Hermione, feeling awkward about where this conversation was going. "Maybe you shouldn't be sharing this."

"Oh, it's fine," he said, rolling his eyes. "She's incredibly open about it. Writes and blogs and such all over the internet. Moreover, she told me I should share whatever I felt was necessary to help make this situation better." His eyes then came alight, and he snatched another biscuit from the plate, shoving it into his mouth. "By the way - Granger, do you even know about the internet? I didn't until I left, and now I can't live without it."

"It... it was still pretty new when I was a kid," Hermione said, still overwhelmed by the new amount of information she was facing. "I never got used to it. I'm not like the Muggle students in my classes, all abuzz about their social networks."

"You've got to get on it," he said, a thrill in his voice. "You absolutely must. Now that the wards are disbanded, Minerva's given me the go-ahead to install a computer lab. I insist you try it."

"Erm," Hermione said, "all right?"

"Excellent," said Snape, taking another biscuit. "So..." he said, his voice dialing down again, as he remembered the original reason he'd come to see her. "So, I wonder if you have any other questions for me. I..." he paused, took a deep breath, and sighed. "I'm still adjusting to you being a colleague and not my student, I admit." He closed his eyes. "It's been a difficult adjustment. Environmental influences make people act completely different. I..." he took a breath, "I suppose I want you to know, Miss Granger, that I've changed. And I'm not entirely sure how much I've changed, really. But I'm definitely different physically, and I know I'm different psychologically."

Hermione, touched by this speech, could indeed see that Snape was different than she'd ever seen him.

"Very well," she said, sadly, "it seems you've learned your lesson. Thank you for your apology, Professor."

"Severus," said the man, earnestly - perhaps too much so. "Please call me Severus."

"Maybe," said Hermione, standing up and drawing her blanket more tightly around her. "I'll... I'll think about it."

Snape studied her. And Hermione studied him. He did indeed seem much more lively than when she'd seen him the past few days. And... and receptive?

How interesting.

Despite herself, she said, "So, you see what the problem is with what you did."

"Yes," he said, and sighed. "Moreover, I must thank you for your charity - though perhaps it was out of a misplaced sense of guilt for what happened, so perhaps I should not be thanking you at all - in not going to Minerva about this. I know she'd have had my guts for garters had she known about this."

"We wouldn't want that pretty gut made into garters," said Hermione, more tenderly than she intended, allowing herself a healthy glance at his vast belly. (Now that she knew he was off the market, she felt like she could do this more safely than before). Her face reddened as she did so, but she brushed away her blush, by adding, "So, erm, about that. I actually did go to Minerva. Right away, as it happened. She just wasn't interested in hearing what I had to say."

Severus Snape's entire face changed. "Really?" he said, "I can't believe this."

"Neither can I," Hermione replied, "but she completely brushed me off. And she gave me this enormous bundle of papers." She gestured at the papers that had been residing on her bureau. "I just know it won't go anywhere, so I figure, why bother?"

Snape's round face was clearly heated, and he took one additional biscuit and stood up.

"Miss Granger," he said, a tone of iron bracing his words, "I'm glad you told me this. I... it seems I'm going to have to go have a talk with our headmistress."

"What sort of talk?" asked Hermione, standing up with him.

His thick jaw was set and determined as he said, "I need to know why I wasn't punished for what I did."

With that, he stormed out of the room like a barrel dropped from a wagon on a mountain road.

And, like a weak metaphor, Hermione threw on a cover-robe and followed, not sure what to expect, but feeling a rush of dismal pride (informed by jealousy).


	6. Chapter 6

They got to McGonagall's suite in faster time than Hermione would have imagined from someone of Severus' bulk. Also, she was impressed with how silently he still moved - where he once was as soundless as the gentle swish of his cloak against the floorboards, now that there was a little bit more to him, there was now the reassuring added sounds of floorboards groaning under his weight with every step, as well as the scraping of twill fabric between his thick thighs.

Snape rapped at the door firmly, and McGonagall's frail, "just a moment," resulted in her being at the door in her braids and slippers in seconds flat. "Yes?" she said, and when she saw both of her potions professors standing in the hall, one of which was barely decent, McGonagall asked, "Where's the fire?"

"In my tongue," said Severus fiercely, and, with an apologetic look towards Hermione, he edged his way inside McGonagall's suite and closed the door.

Hermione found her ears full of muffilato all of a sudden, and feeling somewhat infantilized, she sat down and poked at her belly. In her haste, she'd picked up one of her more comfortable (read: large) robes, and it saddened her to see that the belly that had been rounding out nicely last week was, at this point, deflated significantly due to her lack of eating.

Since she was already feeling better about the situation, she went back to her suite and took some action to remedy her lack of plumpness by eating the remainder of the biscuits and drinking most of the rest of the milk. Once these were accomplished, she felt more full and plump, and generally in a better mood than she was before.

She went back to sit in the hallway, and sat on the floor, one hand on her expanding tummy, one pinching her delicious lovehandles to try and see what kinds of shapes they made when she squished them.

Finally, the muffilato ended, and Severus stepped out of the room, and McGonagall closed the door behind him.

"That didn't sound like it went well," said Hermione as she looked at Snape.

Snape shrugged. "I hope she'll come around at some point. I've given myself the duty of scrubbing the cauldrons for you tomorrow, however. By hand."

"What?" Hermione asked with a laugh, though her mind couldn't help but stutter as she realized he was prescribing his own favorite punishment to himself. "Why on earth?"

He looked at her with sadness in his eyes. "Just let me."

She couldn't exactly deny him such a self-flagellatory commitment. "Erm. Sure. If you need it, have at it."

He nodded, and as he walked her to her bedroom door, he bid her goodnight, and said, "I...I hope I haven't been too forward, Miss Granger. Social things - at least *real* social things - were never my strong suit. I'm an old spy with habits that die hard. I... I struggle when it comes to interacting with people that aren't clearly-marked enemies with goals on their backs."

She felt herself smiling as she looked at him, his face taut and chubby, his belly hanging low and heavy, his arse full and succulent. And to look at him, she knew she couldn't hold anything against him.

"You... you're forgiven," she said gently. "Don't fret over it. Please. Just... as long as you're nice. I think I like this effect that Erika has on you. I'm looking forward to meeting her someday."

"Oh, perhaps you will," he said, not sounding entirely invested in such a future, "perhaps not. Whatever she wants. She doesn't plan on coming back to England for a while. She's doing a pharmacology fellowship, you see," he added, with pride bleeding out of his voice. "At Harvard Medical School."

"She sounds great," said Hermione, feeling like she didn't give a damn. She truly didn't want to hear about Erika Holmes and how Brilliant she was.

"She is," said Snape.

He then took a deep breath, and said, "Well, I should be off to bed, as should you, I believe."

"No rush," said Hermione, feeling sorry to see him go. "Thank you for… being nice, for once."

"I…" He seemed surprised by this comment. "I could ask for some elaboration, but I think we're both a bit too tired to go on talking about this. I say we adjourn here and regroup some time during the week."

"That sounds fine," said Hermione, already feeling sleepy.

"Excellent," said Snape, and he gave a short bow. Even as portly as his body was, it was elegant.

"To later," he said, and turned on his heel to walk towards his own room.

Hermione replied, softly, "to later," and crept into her own room, thoroughly bewildered by the events of the evening.


	7. Chapter 7

She didn't actually see him that soon. Granted, she was on the verge of avoiding *him* at this point, because she felt awkward about the whole situation.

It surprised her very much that Snape's next step, after seeing into a very intimate place in her mind, was to reconsider his actions and ask for forgiveness.

Well, she supposed, people changed. She'd certainly changed during her time in the ministry.

It did rankle her that she seemed to be the one worse for wear after five years. Then again, as she considered it, his life was so abysmal, perhaps the only direction he could go was up.

Speaking of going up: after her interaction with Snape in her room, she felt her body going back to its more-normal state of softness, though slowly, as she began to regroup and get back into a healthy routine.

She was trying to keep as her meals as regular as she could in the Great Hall, arriving early whenever possible, and staying late when she didn't see Snape come in the entire meal. But most days, she realized, he just didn't eat in the Great Hall.

Once she realized this, she wondered how much she should take this personally. While Snape had told her he looked forward to talking with her later, she hadn't seen him really make an effort to make this happen. It was disappointing, and Hermione wondered if perhaps he had been lying.

But no. She had a pretty dang good bullshit detector, and nothing had come to her attention during that conversation, so she decided that he must have been sincere.

But a week went by, and she didn't see him. A second week went by, and she only saw him the day she came in late to get breakfast - he was already on his way out, and he smiled - SMILED! - at her apologetically and went on, not stopping.

During this time, there was no one else really to talk to at the table. Pomona and Rolanda always came and left swiftly. McGonagall, while polite, seemed to focus all of her attention on her stringent portion of steel-cut oatmeal, and while other professors came and went, none was interested enough in Hermione to break up their habits or cliques in order to sit with her.

It wasn't strange to feel like the outlier at Hogwarts. But she hadn't felt this lonely since her first year.

Not only was this emotional drama taking place, she also felt her clinical-grade anxiety mounting. Of course, why should she feel anxious that he was avoiding her? What did it matter? It wasn't as if her crush on Snape - oh, yes, she'd finally admitted to herself that she was completely smitten - was solicited, reciprocated, or even noticed. But she still wanted to make sure that she wasn't on his bad side.

Granted, she'd spent so much of her life chasing after good grades from him that it wasn't exactly a difficult transition.

Being a teacher meant you had a lot of power, Hermione noticed, and she felt the power imbalance acutely between herself and Snape, even though they were supposedly colleagues.

Finally, not able to take it anymore, Hermione found herself knocking on Snape's chamber door one morning. She noticed, as the sunlight hesitantly shone through the hall window, that the nameplate on his door was more dim and tarnished than any of the others. Many years of pounding from Dumbledore in the dead of night, she assumed.

And she sighed. It was always painful to think about Dumbledore in a state other than a cheerful, benevolent, if brilliant old man.

Snape wasn't the kind who could open the door without undoing several layers of wards, it sounded like; a few words and a tangle of spells later, and Severus opened the door. He was scowling at the light.

"What is it, Granger?" he spat, looking cross.

"Erm," Hermione said, finding her tongue confiscated by a cat. "Erm. Come to breakfast." She at least managed to get part of what she'd intended to say out of her head.

He looked at her, rubbed his temples, and closed his eyes. "Erm," he responded, just as awkwardly, "I have already come to breakfast."

"When?" Hermione demanded, "I didn't see you. I almost never see you. What, do you eat all of your meals in your rooms, alone?"

He seemed a bit taken aback. "Yes?" he answered, somewhat testily. "What would you expect? That's my routine. I've never regularly dined in the Great Hall for any meals."

Hermione scrutinized him briefly. She was delighted to see that he looked a bit rounder than he had last time she had a good look at him. He wasn't wearing a cloak, and his shirt was partly untucked from his trousers, but she could see his trousers were quite tight, and getting a little bit thin at the waistline where it was clear Snape had been regularly stretching them with tailoring spells.

"Well," she said, "can I eat with you?"

"Whatever for?" Snape asked, clearly uncomfortable, but then he put a hand to his head. "Oh, because for you, breakfast is gossip time. Can't get along with your day without hearing the latest tidbits about who's dating who and whatnot."

"You know it's not that," said Hermione with a scowl. "I just don't like to eat alone. And I'm really not able to find anyone else to eat with every morning. At least, no one who wants to talk to me so early. So, will you let me eat up here with you?"

Severus rolled his eyes. "Fine. But you must promise me one thing."

Hermione, glad he'd been so easy to convince, still was cautious when she asked, "What?"

His eyes were mischievous as he responded, "You must promise not to ask me to share."

With that, he clapped his hands briskly, and a houself that Hermione had tried to free at one point - who went by the name of Lowly - showed up, smiling and beaming.

"Master Snape," said the elf with a bow. "Do you wish anything else?"

"Not for myself," Snape said, but then amended, "Oh, well, wait. I would like some of that brioche french toast you mentioned. I thought I didn't, but now I've thought about it and changed my mind."

"Very good sir," chirped Lowly. "Would you be wanting that instead of the eggs Benedict, or with?"

"With," said Snape with a sniff, "Now Lowly, please be so good as to take Professor Granger's order."

Professor. He'd called her Professor Granger. Feeling uncommonly lovely inside, she almost said yes to everything Lowly offered, though barely caught herself.

When Lowly had gone, Snape was looking at her with curious eyes.

"What did you mean, the other day," he said, settling himself down in a sizeable armchair that he nonetheless succeeded in filling. "When you said 'thank you for being nice, for once'?"

"I meant," Hermione said, feeling the need to tread lightly on this issue, "that you've got a history of being... less than kind."

"Oh." He looked relieved, though also sad. "Well. That's all?"

"Yes," Hermione said, then smirked. "No deeper meaning."

"All right," he said. "I understand."

He then proceeded to be thoroughly distracted as Lowly brought him a hot cup of coffee, a carafe of orange juice, and Hermione's black tea.

"So." He stirred no less than four lumps of sugar into his black coffee, and took a sip. "What do you want to talk about, Granger?"

She was put off by the comment. "Well, when you put me on the spot like that, of course I'm not going to have an answer."

"Very well," he said, and she could start to see that he was just teasing her. "I'm guessing that you're interested in my newfound affection..." he paused, looking out the window dramatically, "for research."

"Oh," said Hermione, annoyed because she'd been hoping - as he knew she'd be hoping - that he'd elaborate a little bit about his girlfriend situation. "I'd genuinely love that. But I want to know a little bit more about your newfound affection for a woman that isn't Harry's mum."

That might have been a little inappropriate, and Snape looked stunned.

"Again," he repeated, "how nice it would be to live in a world where one's deepest secrets weren't left on the pavement to be picked up and trampled on by casual wayfarers."

"Do you think I'm a casual wayfarer?" countered Hermione glibly.

He studied her, and she smiled at him.

"I have no way of telling," he answered at last. "My frame of reference for such things is rather poor. My closest confidante for the past twenty years was a man who was using me up until his last breath."

"Well," Hermione said, shrinking a little bit, "perhaps your frame of reference could use with some expanding."

She cast a glance at him, and the corner of his mouth twitched, picking up the place where she could have made a joke, but didn't. It seemed to cement how comfortable he seemed to be with the conversation.

"So," he said, after a pause, "Once I got myself out of the shithole that I called my escape apartment, I spent most of my time as a research assistant in a lab at Oxford. Initially it was just tedious work, but soon I started pursuing my own independent projects..."

He described in great detail his adventures at Oxford, and Hermione listened, enraptured.

There was something in his face that she'd never seen before, when he talked about the intricate problems of chemistry, and how he was trying to apply his new skills and knowledge to developing an evidence-based werewolf vaccine, to prevent the virus from infecting innocents upon being bitten.

"I had the great privilege of being exposed to some of the best research on HIV/AIDs that the Muggle world could offer," he was explaining, and then there was a sudden blink! and pop! and there was a great smorgasboard of plates on the dining table.

Snape heaved himself up out of his chair and edged himself to the dining table. He briskly unfolded his napkin, laid it on his lap, and gestured for Hermione to join him.

He then continued, barely skipping a beat to shove items of food in his mouth.

It was fascinating to watch him, Hermione observed. As she ate, she watched him eat. And even as he was talking virtually non-stop about all of this exciting research, she kept being distracted by the wobbling of his chins, the way he tucked food into his mouth as efficiently as one might put mail in a postal box, and the way he simply seemed to enjoy every bite.

There was a sense of exquisite pleasure that he experienced every time his fork went to his mouth. Once or twice, he'd been so overtaken by the delicious taste that he'd had to pause his description and murmur, "Oh, that's excellent," before ploughing forward both with his narrative and his eating.

And oh, Hermione was enjoying watching him eat with an obscene amount of pleasure of her own. Her panties were starting to get sticky the moment he sat down, spread his legs, and began to attack the food. She was nearly squirming with desire as he began to finish his meal. He'd cleared away at least four plates' of food, not to mention a half-dozen pastries. (It was clear he liked the sweet stuff.)

She herself had eaten well, too, though she'd not eaten nearly as much.

As he laid down his fork for the final time, she was struggling to finish her second plate of food. Snape, looking as if he was barely able to keep his eyes open, so stuffed and content he was, managed to maneuver himself in a position where he could make eye contact with her without much effort. This meant propping his fat, heavy face on the table in his hands, with his elbows supporting them by jamming into the table.

"You going to finish that?" he asked her, truly serious (from her standpoint).

"Mmmm," Hermione said, wondering if she was or wasn't.

She looked at his eyes, and she saw a devilish grin in them. A dare, as it were.

"Yes," she answered, "And no, I'm not sharing."

"You'd better finish it, fast," Snape said, scooting his chair towards her in a threatening manner. "Or else I'll be taking it from you."

"No, that won't be necessary," Hermione said, hoping it was true.

"I'll help you," said Snape. He added, "may I touch your abdomen?"

Leave it to Snape to call a stomach an abdomen. Hermione, feeling herself stuffed, figured there could be no harm in his touching her, and allowed him to do so. She felt a pang of worry that somewhere far across the Atlantic, a pretty (thin!) girl was going to get her knickers in a twist about this. But the sensation of having Snape so close to her was so electric that she couldn't bear to think about that.

His touch was surprisingly chaste; he used only his palms to massage her belly and try and make room.

"Come on," he said in a low whisper, too close to her ear for her not to notice, "Just a few more bites, it's good, isn't it? You're getting so round, sweetheart, you're getting so round. Just a few more bites and we can call an elf for our dishes - but until then, take another bite. Good girl."

And so it went, Hermione being coaxed to finish her french toast, and Snape doing her the favor of coaxing her.

Soon, she was beyond stuffed, and Snape continued to massage her for the next several minutes.

Until, both of them simultaneously looked up to see the clock chiming the start of classes.

"Frack," Hermione said, standing up in a wobbly fashion. "I'm supposed to be teaching right now."

"Please," Snape said, "let me help you get there."

Thus saying, he bent down (despite not being agile) and picked up her bookbag. Then he rushed (as fast as he could) to the door, opened it, and took her down the hall.

"I've... got it from here," Hermione insisted, feeling delighted at the amount of care he seemed to be putting into their friendship. "Same tomorrow?"

"Yes," Snape said, smiling.

Hermione stalked off, feeling immensely proud of herself for the events of the morning. She could tackle anything today - she had another wonderful breakfast with Snape tomorrow.


	8. Chapter 8

The next day, he was not as cross as the day before. Perhaps it was because the day outside was gloomy, and the light that shone in the window by his door was dim and more polite, less intrusive.

She knocked and he welcomed her in wordlessly. She noticed that clutter that had spread across the room the day before - books, papers, other academic detritus - had been unceremoniously removed to end tables and other vestigial furniture. Hermione was pleased to see that there were already two chairs at the main table, specifically observing that Snape's most comfy armchair had been moved there. With a strangely gentlemanly gesture, he offered her a seat, and smiling she accepted.

He sat down in it hastily, as if aware that Hermione had been coveting his spot. Without further preamble, he clapped his meaty - though still long-fingered and elegant - hands, and Lowly appeared, and both of them ordered, neither with much deliberation.

"So," Hermione said in a congenial fashion, "I believe you were telling me about the way peptides interacted with each other once you added the reactive agent, in that final experiment before you ended your retirement in the Muggle world."

"Was I?" he said, and a hint of a smirk came to his face. Lowly popped back to deposit coffee and tea on the table, and disappeared again. Snape added his four lumps and slowly stirred, though he wasn't using it as a method of escape as he was yesterday. "I thought the last thing we were talking about was something..._completely_ different." He wore a wry grin, but didn't make eye contact, as if sharing a private joke with his coffee mug.

"Perhaps it was," Hermione said, trying to sound noncommittal, trying her best not to blush. "Well, no matter. What do you want to talk about now?"

Snape paused, looking up at her, beaming as if entertaining the most dangerous of thoughts, and as he looked down again, she thought she saw his tongue skim over the rim of his lips, but once he spoke, his words were just as composed and impassive as always.

"How are you finding teaching?" he asked, glancing up and then down again, failing to conceal a mischievous look that hinted that he was biding his time before asking something _truly_ salacious.

Hermione's face morphed into something resembling a comfortable melancholy. "Oh, well, I'm sure you know its pitfalls, so instead I will tell you what I enjoy about it."

"Do," he bid her, leaning forward over his coffee and gazing at her in such a way that was just slightly exaggerated - she wasn't entirely sure if he was mocking the convention of leaning forward to express interest, or if he was genuinely keen.

For her sanity, she had to assume good faith, she decided. So, she decided he was being earnest.

"While of course it's not all fun and games… I really love to see when a student _gets it,_" she said, a glow rising to her face. "When someone has been struggling and then all of a sudden has an illuminating moment - that makes the struggle worth it for me. It's all the more sweet for a long battle," she went on.

She went on to describe a detailed example of one of the students in her class.

Snape listened with close attention, though it was clear that to some extent, he was indulging her.

"I wish that mattered as much to me," he said finally, as she paused to sip and take some bites of her scone. "I just hated the struggle so much. Especially when there were students in the class, like yourself, who _got it ri_ght away. Why not devote more time to those minds, rather than the dunderheads who wouldn't get it if it bit them on the leg and announced _'here I am, I'm the solution, pick me up and run with me.'"_

"Well, the dunderheads do have something to offer," Hermione counteracted. "I mean, just think about it. If we only educated students who liked the subjects we taught, then there would be so many people who would remain largely in the dark about what we do and why. And then - well, when these dunderheads get positions of power, they think what we do is valueless. And cut our funding. At least this way, they know what we do is valuable - even if the only reason they think it's valuable is because it's hard."

Snape laughed, a low dark laugh that made her thrill expectantly. "Certainly a fair point," he said, smiling, "but that doesn't mean it's enjoyable for the teacher."

"But it's important," Hermione said.

He grinned at her quizzically. "Are you quite sure you weren't sorted into the wrong house, Granger? Deriving enjoyment from the a task's value to society is a decidedly 'Puffy, at least in my book."

She rolled her eyes. "I have a theory about this, actually. I think the whole house system is dumb."

"_What_ a theory, so original, wow,*" he responded coolly, but his eyes were alight and engaged. He clearly was interested.

Lowly arrived then with their food, and they tucked in ravenously.

"So as I was saying," Hermione went on, "I've got a firm-held belief that people naturally gravitate towards approximately two houses. There are very few people who actually meet all of the criteria for their house description - and also very few people whose personalities don't involve at least clear signs of fitting in with another house."

Snape didn't respond, just smiling faintly and eating. As she watched him, Snape truly seemed to have an unlimited capacity, and today as Hermione dominated the conversation, he seemed to do nothing but swallow and chew. She noted happily that he seemed to have rapt attention towards what she was talking about.

"For example," she said, "I do have some very strong Hufflepuff traits, such as a desire to maintain equilibrium with the world morally, and not create enemies when they could be friends."

Snape snorted and took a sip of coffee, but said nothing.

"However," Hermione went on, "the way I _actualize_ these desires - models of relating to the world, you might say - is very _active_. Whereas the majority of the Hufflepuffs I know, they are highly _reactive_ and don't take initiative very often, at least not in large-scale ways. The Hufflepuffs I know are usually the first to remember your birthday, for example, while a Gryffindor might forget. But a Gryffindor might be more likely to help you get a job promotion, which is likely to have a much broader impact than remembering your birthday, whereas a Hufflepuff might be a bit ambivalent towards helping you towards that goal because they don't want to take a stand for or against anything."

Snape sipped his coffee and pushed away his first clean plate.

"So, in your theory, that's the dividing line between the Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs," Snape said, pursing his lips. "How does this train of thought extend to Ravenclaws and Slytherins?"

"You're a step ahead of me," said Hermione, feeling delighted that she had someone to say that to. "So clearly in this schema, the thing that separates Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs is a sense of extraversion, in the sense that they see their actions as having a greater sense of meaning and importance in the world than, I assume, a Slytherin or Ravenclaw might have."

"Are you saying their difference is one of optimism versus pessimism?" Snape asked, frowning. "That doesn't ring true to me."

"I wouldn't even say that," Hermione clarified, "I just would say that the dividing line is what has more weight in terms of personality expression - focus on other-ness, or focus on self-ness."

He caught her eye as she laid emphasis on the word 'weight,' and they shared a brief glance of shared resolution. It was becoming clearer to them both that teasing each other about their bodies was not happening here.

And being able to have this strange connection, of being able to dialogue meaningfully about their fat (even though they weren't explicitly talking about it) _really_ turned Hermione on.

But after this shared moment, he refocused and, after musing for a moment, muttered "Narcissism?" He accompanied this with a bit of a laugh, but she was afraid from the tenor of his voice that he was taking it a little too much to heart.

"I mean," she said fretfully, "in the classical sense, that's what I mean. Not with the contemporary connotation of narcissistic personalities and whatever."

His face indicated he was still not quiescent about this, and she pointed a finger at him.

"Look," she said, "even now, as I'm describing this, look at the form of psychological distress you're having while I'm saying this. What is the primary feeling you're having right now?"

"Erm," he said, his face changing as he switched gears from feeling to analyzing his feelings. "I'm insulted. I just don't feel like someone who's made the error of dedicating his whole miserable life to others qualifies as a narcissist. And I'm bitter that you think I'm a narcissist, though from your perspective, I probably deserve it. "

"Exactly," Hermione said, "you're not worried that such a narcissistic persona would be a bad thing in the world as a whole, you're worried that it's_ what I think of you_. You're concerned more with the self-image than in the images of others. And that's not a bad thing, necessarily," she went on. "It has advantages and disadvantages, like any trait. How it manifests in you, though, it is a fairly concerning disadvantage."

He seemed concerned, but also confused, so she clarified, "I mean, you _do _have a history of being really cruel to people. Lacking empathy."

His face clouded in pain.

"Even now," Hermione pressed, "as I say this, you're considering this from a self-image role - or, oh, I mean an ego-centric perspective - and not an other-centric perspective."

"Well," Snape said, hesitantly, "what if I'm concerned with what _you think of me_?"

"That's still what I'm talking about," Hermione said, feeling gratified that at least he was listening to her. "You're concerned with how I perceive you. You're not really concerned with the image of me in your brain. You're concerned with _how I perceive you,_ not how I perceive myself."

"Okay," he said, and then quietly he asked, "so, let's approach another part of your thesis. You say that I have a problem with empathy. I'm surely going to regret this but - give me an example?"

Hermione was surprised at how interested he was in listening to her, despite how clearly he was disliking this.

She took a deep breath. Was she _really_ about to confront him about something that had happened so long ago?

Yes, she was.

"Remember when someone cast that miserable spell that made my teeth grow to enormous proportions?" she said, finding a lump catching in her throat despite herself. "Do you remember what you said to me?"

He closed his eyes, and appeared visibly pained.

"I...I see what you mean," he said.

"Say it," she said with a hiss.

He looked at her, mortified. And he was probably stunned that she sounded so much like him, honestly.

"Say it," she said again, her voice stern and taut.

"I… I said," he murmured, "I said, _'I see no difference.'_"

"That's what I remember," she affirmed, feeling victorious. "Take note that when you said this, you humiliated a little girl who was already a frequent victim of bullying," said Hermione, her voice rising with emotion. "What the hell were you thinking?"

"I wasn't," he confessed.

"I'd agree. And I think somewhere inside you, there's something about making other people feel bad that pleases you. Seeing other's pain makes you tick."

She looked at him, and it was clear he was repressing his negative emotions. His face was blank, and he pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose.

Oh. She had overdone it. She was definitely not feeling pleased with herself at this point - she'd quite lost control of herself. Snape was sitting there, subdued.

What the hell had _she_ been thinking?

"Well," Hermione said, trying to make up for the arrow she'd shot out of the bow and could not return, "maybe given that, maybe I'm wrong about the self-image thing. It's clear you have an acute awareness of other peoples' emotions. But in this case - as in others, I imagine - you took this knowledge and exploited it. Basically for fun. Am I on to something?"

"I… I guess?" Snape said, and he took a deep breath. "Look," he said, after a moment of silence, "Let's take a moment to talk about something else. I'm a bit overwhelmed."

"Good on you for acknowledging it and not snapping at me," said Hermione, backpedaling, and realizing that she'd been pressing _really_ hard.

"I… I have to ask, though," he said, looking at her. His face was red, and his eyes were… not glassy, but nearing it. He blinked a few times. "Is… is that what you _really_ think of me?"

Hermione was already self-flagellating. Oh, Merlin. What on earth had she done?

"Well," she said slowly, "I guess not. Or I probably would not have said all that. And, on that note, I _probably_ wouldn't be _here_, either, if that's what I really thought of you."

She looked up at him sincerely, and they maintained steady eye contact for several moments. There was no sound in the room but the steady ticking of the clock on the mantel.

Finally, she sighed, and pushed her plate towards him.

"I think my eyes were bigger than my stomach," she said meaningfully.

Snape, who had another full plate of his own to go, looked uncomfortable and pale, like he was going to be sick.

He was really good at hiding it, but she'd made him physically feel ill. And she felt like a monster for it.

"Oh, bother," said Hermione. "I...I'm sorry," she said, standing up and moving her chair to be next to him.

He didn't look at her, just staring ahead, blinking fiercely and glaring at the bookcase across the room.

"Listen," she said softly, "It's... all of this is weird. I get it. It's weird for me, it's weird for you. Not the least of things that's weird is that you're freaking alive, and I'm not freaking crusading for change at the Ministry of Magic. It boggles my mind that I'm here, and you're here, and that we're both here at the same time. And it also boggles my mind that somehow, of all the staff members I could be interested in, I feel like you're the only person in this school who I want to talk to."

Her preliminary exposition complete, she took a breath. "But two people can't always adjust their changing roles seamlessly. Especially two people like us, with such significant breakage in our pasts."

She took a deep breath. "At least, I know we won't get through this without a transition period."

She took another deep breath, preparing herself to be more vulnerable than she'd been with him yet. "I… I think we can be friends, Professor Snape," she said. "At least, I'd like to try. And if it's a bit rough at first, I hope you'll not hold that against me. I have a lot of resentment, but not _so_ much that I can't get over it in a timely fashion. Already I feel like the densest bludger for having been so fracking insensitive this whole conversation."

This did not seem to make Snape look more calm, less distressed, or more receptive. Instead - oh, if only Harry and Ron could see him now - Snape looked like he was going to start tearing up right then and there.

But after a moment, he regained his composure, and shook his head fiercely.

"Weird isn't the half of it," he said with a low grumble. "Of course, turbulence is part of learning to fly."

Then, with a sigh of relief, he said, "Pass… pass me the preserves, please?"

Hermione too was relieved, and she gratefully passed them to him. _Rosehip_ preserves, they were, she noticed with a deep rush of exhilaration.

She wondered if it was a mere coincidence or not. But Snape wasn't about to give up that secret, it was clear.

He finished both of their meals methodically and meticulously. Hermione was looking forward to perhaps touching him a little afterwards, but the clock struck nine before he was done eating, so she just squeezed his shoulder and left him there at the table, finishing the crumbs.

"Tomorrow," he mumbled as she stepped out.

"Yes," she replied. She was glad that there was going to be a tomorrow, after today.

...  
*yes, I just almost used Doge in a fanfic. No, I do NOT apologize. Very Snape. Much in-character. So Doge. Wow.


	9. Chapter 9

She was back the next day, more generous of spirit and thoroughly chastened.

Snape appeared to be in an uncommonly good mood despite the events or yesterday, and Hermione was glad to see that he had already ordered and started eating.

"Sorry," he apologized perfunctorily, "I didn't sleep much, and I was hungry."

"That's fine," she said preferring him eating more than less. "I hope you'll still get something when I order. I don't like feeling like I'm the only one getting food."

He caught her eye, "I'll see what can be done," he said, and again they shared a significant moment of mutual understanding.

She realized that he understood - possibly better than she herself did - how much she enjoyed watching him eat.

They soon were ordered, and they launched directly into conversation.

"So," she queried, "you were up all night?"

"Yes," he said, and began explaining a complicated combination of spells that he'd been using in his methodical, scientific proceedings in the lab.

It was very interesting to Hermione, but it isn't really interesting to us Muggles. So forgive me - I'm going to use my authorial liberty to skip over it.

"This is all really fascinating," Hermione mused. "I remember the genius ideas I used to get when I had all-nighters. Just the shift of perspective needed, sometimes, to think of trying an unusual angle. Now," she said, sitting back and putting a hand on her full stomach, cradling it. "I used to carry out all-nighters regularly as a student, and even at the Ministry sometimes, but it's gotten harder as I've gotten older. At this point, though, the recovery from such exertions is no longer efficient enough to make it worth it." Hermione said, laying down her fork for the first time in about twenty minutes, as Snape played catch-up to focus on putting food in his face.

"I commiserate," Snape said with a roll of his eyes. "I used to stay up three nights in a row and barely feel it." Then he frowned. "And why are you talking about getting old - I was your age."

"You're right," said Hermione with a grin. "So since this doesn't seem to be something that you do often, what inspired you this time?"

"Honestly?" Snape asked, a funny look in his eyes. "You might not want to know."

"What?" said Hermione, guessing that this was something salacious, and unable to think of anything else but what it might be.

"You might regret me telling you," he said with a smirk.

"I won't know until you tell me," she responded with a frivolous twist of her hair .

"Okay," he said, and (almost gently) he murmured, ducking his head and letting his hair fall over his face, hiding it partly, "phone sex "

She laughed - it was painful, given that she wished she could be giving him real-life sex - but it was also a funny reason for staying up late.

"Given where Erika lives," she said, self-consciously, "that isn't exactly surprising."

"...Yes."

He flat-out blushed. Not a furious red, just a little hint of pink in his cheeks.

It was freaking adorable, and Hermione wanted his cheeks for herself.

Why did he have to get himself in a relationship with a girl so far away?

Why did he have to be so chubby and plump and delightful looking?

Why did she think it was okay to have a crush on her former teacher?

_Grow up, _she told herself. _Stop messing around with a thing that promises to be very good in its current form. Poking and prodding isn't a way to get what you want. You should be satisfied to have someone to get fat with. _

Because, fundamentally, that's what she realized this relationship was becoming. A relationship based on their mutual love of food, and mutual shared interest in being fat.

"So," she said, her voice drooping with a little bit of sadness , "When you stay up late, you stay up late and keep on staying up, I take it."

"Yes," he said, "and it's quite productive. Even though I'll crash later. Can't stay up for days on end like I used to, subsisting on a cocktail of adrenaline and cigarettes."

"You smoked?" Hermione said, and Snape shrugged.

"In my generation, it was more rare to find someone who didn't smoke, Miss Granger," he said sternly. "My parents - and most of my peers parents - were crummy. Which meant that my generation's offspring - your generation - was coddled beyond measure."

Hermione smiled. "I guess that's the cycle."

She then remembered a loose end that they hadn't tied up yet. "So tell me about Erika," she said sweetly. "What is she like? She must be pretty special to stay with even though she's a quarter way round the world."

"She certainly is," said Snape with a genuine smile - again hiding half his face under his hair. He spooned a generous dollop of cream cheese on his lox. "I don't exactly care to gloat, however."

"Gloat away," Hermione begged, despite the fact that she was sure she was opening a bag of worms. "I get a thrill out of it. Vicarious romance."

He still seemed uncertain, so she urged him, "Come on. I have had five years of believing that you died the tragic unrequited hero who never found love. You owe it to yourself to start changing the color of your story."

"Do I really," he responded, but he ultimately seemed thoroughly pleased by her suggestion, so he said, "I suppose I will tell you - but I do intend to keep this as brief as possible. Maybe I'll tell you more in the future, because heaven knows there's more, and heaven knows you probably would bleed just to hear me tell it. Greedy girl," he added with an affectionate - _affectionate?! -_ growl.

"But suffice it to say: I was sick to my stomach of being in love with Lily."

The statement dropped out of his mouth, and quite truly shocked Hermione. He elaborated, "I'd been in love with her for practically my whole sodding life. I can't even begin to explain how miserable it was, not to be able to move on. By the time you were in school, I wanted to, but I felt like I couldn't. I didn't want to be unfaithful. I didn't want to renege on my debt to her, to Albus, to society."

A quiet rage began to build in his voice.

"So that was my prison. I was so angry, but the only place I knew to direct it was towards myself. After all, I was the screw-up, I was the one who had blasphemed her when she was trying to help me, I was the one who had become a Death-Eater, I was the one responsible for their death."

He took a sip of his coffee, and Hermione was surprised to see his cup shaking slightly in his hand.

"But then, Dumbledore's final request. It happened. I killed him. It nearly drove me insane. Can you imagine, being forced to kill a man you're indebted to a thousand times over because of, yet again, your own error? Then having to act - to _believe_, at least in the epidermis of your mind - that you were happy about it?"

He was breathing deeply, and took another sip of coffee. His hand was steadier, but he was gripping the handle harder. Hermione noticed the way the fat that covered the back of his hand shifted over his bones as he grabbed the cup, forming little rolls and wrinkles. But she felt guilty for noticing this, so she brought her eyes back to make contact with Snape's own. He wasn't looking at her, he was just staring deeply into his coffee mug, his hair loosely covering his face so that he was completely out of sight from her.

Not looking up, he went on, "I was at the breaking point, and I was feeling faint of heart. I realized that by spending my entire life trying to pay back debts that weighed on me, I'd only accumulated more. That summer, in a fit of despair, I succumbed finally to the one sin I'd never sunk to - going to a prostitute."

Hermione didn't exactly find this shocking - she was on the more sex-positive side than not - but she listened soberly, giving him the attention he was due.

"I… I didn't want to leave, after the fact," he went on, still not looking up, but a certain tenseness left his body as he relaxed into the upward swing of the story. "And she was willing to indulge me as long as I paid her. So we chatted for hours. Well. Chatted wasn't exactly what happened," he said miserably. "I spilled my life's story to her. I felt so crippled, and I kept telling myself I could just _obliviate _her afterwards and my secrets would be safe, and it felt so refreshing to talk to someone who wasn't psychoanalyzing me the entire time. I suppose I wouldn't have done it had I not been so overcome by having finally, after so many years, felt the flesh of a woman."

Hermione was startled to realize the significance of this story: Snape was confessing to _never having had sex until he was almost forty. _She stared at him in wonderment. To look at him, he'd always seemed so sexually evocative, so cool and collected and charming. She knew that by that time, she'd been having fantasies about him for years.

All that, and he'd never once done the dirty. No wonder he'd been fucking mental.

He sighed. "She was so kind. I was so depressed. She coddled me and held me when my heart could not bear any more strain. And she effectively became my mistress after that. She took the place of Dumbledore as my confidante. I thoroughly regret having not gotten myself a whore sooner - she was so much more safe and trustworthy than he was."

A rueful smile emerged on his face. "I should look in on her," he said softly, "I wonder how she is. Anyway," he went on, "she eased my burdens significantly during that time. I was cared for in ways I'd never been cared for. I know I would not have gotten through that final year without her. And, she helped me realize that my obsession with Lily was not really the focal point of my life, at least not in the way I thought it was."

He took a deep breath, and looked up to read Hermione's face, as if he expected her to be judging him.

She wasn't. Her eyes were a little glassy, but she was listening soberly and quietly with rapt attention.

"You're ever the attentive student," he commented under his breath.

"Only when the material's worth learning," she responded quietly.

He nodded. "So anyway. As my life became more and more colorful with that relationship - if you can call it that - my obsession with Lily was fading in importance with every passing day. Soon my whole life prior to his death seemed like a nightmare. And I began to realize how Albus had clipped my emotional wings, so to speak. He had actively kept me attached to her - attributing everything I did to her in ways that were persuasive to me at the time, but once I was out of his cloud of influence, lost their power."

He was at a place emotionally where he was able to pick at his food again, and he began to munch on a slice of toast. "So much of our relationship - I mean mine with Albus - was one centered around debt," he said between bites. "I was in debt to him, in debt to Lily, in debt to society. And he fueled the fires of self-hatred that burned in me so fiercely. He liked to let me believe that I was one fucked-up fucker who was responsible for all the fucked-up-ness of the world. It was easier to control me, I suppose."

Hermione felt her heartbeat, and the rise and fall of her stomach as she breathed. She wasn't sure what to say, if anything.

Snape went on, "And even after Albus was dead and the albatross around my neck slipped off, for a while I still walked around like I was still wearing it, because I was conditioned to the weight."

He glanced at her and made eye contact, but he wasn't testing her this time he used the term _weight_, at least not really. It was like he was testing a floorboard that he was fairly certain would hold, but wanted to check to see if it would squeak if he stepped on it.

Hermione was rock-solid, and didn't squeak.

He took a deep breath. "But! Once I had 'died,' and had a moment alone to think, and wasn't being pulled every which way to fill a position running Hogwarts that I didn't ask for - I realized that the debt that had trapped me was gone. I was cold and alone and naked and starting again from square one, but dammit, I was free."

Hermione felt her face drain with emotion. She closed her eyes and breathed heavily. She felt like she'd just read a really intense novel and wanted to cry. "May… may I ask," she said quietly, "Why on _earth_ would you choose to come back then, to this place where you were so abused?"

He seemed genuinely pleased she had asked. "Merely to prove to myself, Professor Granger," he said, picking up his napkin from his lap and putting it unceremoniously on the table, "that the shadows had no power over me any more."

And then, in a thoroughly delightful way, he added, "Also, magical research. Peace and quiet, not needing to hide my explosions and strange smells from the Muggle neighbors. Perfect timing, too, because I was so fucking _sick _of the drugs busts."

This lighthearted comment did not divert Hermione from her primary set of emotions of the moment: Snape was fucking _badass_. Even more than she'd thought he was.

"Do you know," Hermione said, practically whimpering, "how terrifyingly _great_ you seem right now?"

He was taken aback, but after a moment of consideration, he took it in a way that showed he was flattered.

"Erm," he said, "it's… not as though my life is fiction devised for your amusement," he said, though he wasn't biting. He merely sounded bewildered.

"You're still great," Hermione replied, swelling with sadness and affection, a poisonous brew that threatened to explode her heart.

"I don't feel it," he said, slowly. "At least, recently, I've felt like I've been _copacetic_. But that's not until recently. So, _great_? Not in my vocabulary."

"Shush," she said in response, not able to articulate, just emote. "I think you're great. End of story."

He seemed to hesitate, but a lopsided smile emerged on his face. "Well," he said, "the feeling is… mutual?"

He sounded uncertain about it, but Hermione was soaring.

And angry.

_Dammit_, why did he have to have a girlfriend?

"Aren't you hungry?" he asked, breaking her mood swing gracefully. "You've barely touched your food. It'd be a shame to waste it. Poor elves will be broken-hearted."

Hermione shrugged. "I guess I'm not."

Snape took another sip of coffee, then heaved his way out of his comfortable chair. "How about we try and get a little more in there, shall we?"

Hermione flushed quite red, and nodded vigorously.

They proceeded to stuff Hermione until the clock chimed, and she left reluctantly, almost too satiated to teach her class.

"You know," Hermione said as she left, "we were supposed to talk about Erika. And you were supposed to gloat."

He shrugged. "So sorry. Tangents, you know."

But she had the sneaking suspicion that he was holding out on her, for some reason. Teasing her.

Well, she could wait, if he wanted her to. She might be a greedy girl, but she'd show him that she was at least a patient one.


	10. Chapter 10

"Blimey, 'Mione," Ron said from the other side of the Floo, "you're putting it on, aren't you?"

"Thanks for being so considerate, Ron, as always," Hermione sniped back, rolling her eyes. She loved him, but sometimes he was just such a blockhead. In her defense, she _was _sitting in such a position that her belly prominently blocked out as much of Ron's face as possible. And also gave him an unabridged view of how plump she'd gotten since she'd last seen him.

"Sorry," he said, abashed. "I just… you know. I miss you. And, you know, I think you look cute when you're chubby."

Hermione wished she could say the same about missing Ron, but she hadn't thought much about Ron and the demise of their relationship in a while. At least not since the school year started.

"Thanks," she said, ignoring his chubby comment. "I'm keeping myself busy," she said, fluffing herself up like a hen. "I mean, being a student was a cakewalk compared to this."

"I'm sure," Ron said, smiling. "I can't believe we're not together anymore, 'Mione."

"Well, you'd better start believing it," said Hermione crossly, "given everything we've gone through. Don't tell me you are getting cold feet about Rodney?"

Ron blushed a furious red. "Don't say that," he said with a grimace. "It's not like that at all. In fact, we're moving in together."

"Oh." Hermione plastered on a fake smile, thinking of their little flat in London, where he still lived. She knew Rodney cursorily, and she really wished that Ron had fallen in love with one of the surely-abundant more-aesthetically-sensitive gay men in the world. The whole flat's color scheme was white and khaki, not colors that would stand up well to Rodney's large muddy boots. "Congratulations. When is that happening ?"

Ron looked down, mortified. "Erm. Whenever I tell my folks, I guess."

"Can't you just… pass as roommates for a while?" Hermione suggested, though she was sure Ron had a good reason that this wouldn't work.

"We talked about it," said Ron, "but neither of us is particularly interested in pretending. He's… he's being really patient, 'Mione, but I'm afraid that either my parents are going to disown me or he's going to leave me. And I really don't want either of those things to happen."

"Well," Hermione said gently, "you've got to tell them sometime."

"Do I?" Ron asked, and in his eyes she saw the strategist. "I mean, if I think of a way out of it - why not take it? I just need to come upon the right course of action." He looked at her with puppy-dog eyes. "I love my family and Rodney both. Why should I be forced to choose?"

"There's no guarantee that you'll be forced to choose," Hermione said, "Your father would definitely not disown you. I know him. He's sympathetic to queer issues."

"But it's not dad I'm worried about," said Ron with a sigh.

Both of them knew who he _was _worried about: Molly, the ever-doting "when am I going to be having grandchildren?" matron. When Hermione and Ron had, while still together, implied that children were going to be out of the question because of Hermione's desire to remain career-focused, Molly Weasley's eyes had burned, and she had begun a tirade the likes of which Hermione had never seen before directed at her.

_Am I not good enough for you because I'm a mother and housewife? Children are the future of the world. Do you not care about the world's future? You're an intelligent witch - you should be morally obligated to have children. Children are everything! If you will not bear my son's children, you will never be a part of this family. _

Thus, Hermione had a lot of empathy for Ron, when Ron wanted to avoid coming out to his family as gay.

"Well, anything I can do to help, let me know," Hermione said. "Have you spoken to Harry recently?"

Ron shook his head, somber. "I don't know if we'll ever talk again," he said, with deep pathos. "You know."

"Yeah," Hermione said, sadly. "I know."

Harry hadn't been particularly helpful when Ron came out to him a few months ago, though granted he was _really _put on the spot by Ron's declaration of love for him, and Hermione couldn't blame Harry for needing some space. When it came between choosing between the love of your life and her brother… well, as an unequivocally straight dude, Harry had chosen the love of his life, and Hermione couldn't blame him. At least Harry, without needing a reminder, promised to keep his lips sealed about Ron's non-normative inclinations.

"I guess I understand it," Ron said, still in grief, "I guess in his place, it'd feel a little weird."

"Sure," Hermione said, though she herself couldn't imagine abandoning one or the other of the boys because of something as uncertain and flexible and relatively unimportant as unrequited affection. She'd gone between fancying one, then the other, then both, then neither of her best mates, with some fluctuation in between. Ultimately, having them as friends was more important than having either one of them have a relationship with her in any particular way.

"So what are you doing for fun, 'Mione," Ron said, trying to be encouraging. "Are you seeing anyone?"

"No, not really." Hermione flushed red. She really _wished _that she could call what she did with Snape some amount of 'dating,' but was quite unable to do so. "But I do see a lot of Snape, though."

"Wait," Ron said, stunned. "What?"

"Oh, you didn't know?" Hermione said, though of course she knew Ron didn't. She wanted act casual about the whole thing, knowing that Ron still harbored a great deal of hatred for Snape. "Snape's alive. Came back to do research here. He and I are…" she paused. "Friends? I guess?"

"Hermione," Ron said, emotional. "I forbid you to see that man as a friend."

"Well, too bad," Hermione said, "you definitely don't have a say in who I see as a friend. Even when we were together, I never allowed you to define what I did with my time."

Ron rolled his eyes, aggrieved, but he knew he wasn't going to get anywhere.

"Just… Hermione? He's such a slimy git. Are you sure he's not a vampire, coming back from the dead?"

She just laughed. "He's definitely not a vampire, Ron," she scolded. "And I'll have you know that I don't intend to sit idly by while you keep on saying cruel things about him."

"What, would you stop him if he was mocking Harry and me," Ron said with a growl.

"Yes," Hermione responded, "believe it or not, as I get to know him, you and he have some real points of similarity, now that he's not running around being a double agent."

"Yeah, right," Ron said in disbelief. "Merlin, at this rate, 'Mione, next time I talk to you, you'll be engaged."

"Not likely," said Hermione firmly. "He's got a girlfriend."

"What?" Ron said, his mind clearly blown. "Snape. Has a girlfriend."

"Yeah," Hermione said, shaking her head at Ron's reaction.

"Snape has a girlfriend," Ron repeated. "Well, she better watch out." He was shaking his head. "I can tell you got the hots for him."

"Maybe a little," she admitted. "But don't you dare tell anyone."

"Oh, I was thinking of shouting it off the rooftops," he responded, still shaking his head. "'Mione, you got to know that he's a slimeball. You know I can tell. I never liked him."

"How on earth is that supposed to be a good barometer," she said with a sniff. "You started hating Viktor once we started dating."

"But that's because I _fancied _him, you arse," he responded. "Come on, 'Mione, you know I care about you."

"Then let me make my own mistakes," she said, and added, despite her better judgment not to, "Don't try and be your mum."

He clouded. "Okay. Fine. I won't. Go on. Go fuck that slimeball. When he dumps your arse and come back crying to me, I'll tell you that I told you so."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Ron, again, he's taken. I'm not stepping into that mess."

"I can't imagine he'll be taken long," Ron said with a grumble. "He's too much of a slimy git to stay in someone's hands when there's something more attractive to look at."

"You're presuming he finds me more attractive," Hermione said, getting frustrated of this conversation.

"Who wouldn't!" Ron cried, then clarified, "Erm, what straight guy wouldn't! Or lez girl," he added, fumbling as Hermione flat-out laughed at him. "I dunno. You're attractive, 'Mione. Don't underestimate the power you have as a drop-dead gorgeous girl."

She just shook her head. "I never, and still don't, understand why you think I'm so irresistible. I don't do makeup. I don't work out. I don't eat small portions. I suck at managing my hair. And I rarely shave my legs and whatnot."

"None of those things matter," Ron said, smiling ruefully. "You don't know men, 'Mione. There's something else about you that makes men swoon over you."

"And what's that?" Hermione asked, indulging him.

"Charisma?" Ron suggested.

"Well, gee, that simplifies matters," Hermione sniped. "I'll stop taking my charisma pills. Then I won't be attractive to the likes of Snape, and I'll keep celibate until one day you preemptively dump Rodney, and you decide you want to pretend to be straight for your parents' sake, and you buy me a wedding ring. And then we'll suffer through twenty years of _where's my grandbabies _and, in the end divorce quietly. This plan okay with you?"

"Shut up," Ron said, laughing lowly. "You know we're past that point."

"Just a reminder," Hermione said, smirking. "I'm willing to go to the mat for you, my dear, but a life-long commitment to misery isn't a simple matter of defending your best mate from a cruel world."

"We could make it work," Ron joked, though it took her a moment to see he was joking. "This place is a two-bedroom. One bedroom for you, one for me. You can fuck as many blokes as you like - or, or women, I guess - and I'll fuck as many blokes as I like. If we get bored, we can fuck each other. And someday, if Harry decides he's into the idea, we can fuck him together. Sound good?"

"Perfect," Hermione said with a hearty laugh. "Just what I envision for the rest of my life. One big house of fuckery."

"That's what we can call it," Ron said, "House of Fuckery. Or just to confuse people, we could call it House of No Fucks, for no fucks given."

"That's great, Ron," Hermione said with an indulging laugh. "Well, I'm gonna ring off now. Got loads to edit for class tomorrow."

"That's right," Ron said with a grin. "Well, call me when you end up fucking Snape."

"Which won't happen," said Hermione, trying to persuade the inkling of hope that was winding its way around her heart the more that Ron talked about it.

"And later you'll be mortified you were in such denial," Ron replied, chipper. "Go on, have fun. Bang the slimy old cock."

"I love you," she said, trying to shut him up, a smile on her face.

"I love you," he replied, "talk to you later."

He threw some ash on his end, and the floo went back to normal flames.

Hermione heaved herself up out of her chair and went to the kitchen for some water. As she passed the door, she noticed there was an origami swan next to the door, flapping its wings and looking highly annoyed at having been kept waiting.

"Oh," she said, wondering how long it had been there. It gave a little squawk, and she picked it up, whereupon it unfolded into a flat piece of paper.

_Sleep cycle's fucked up_, read the note. _Dinner tomorrow instead of breakfast?_

"Yes," she said, and began to look for a quill, but as she spoke, the word formed on the page.

Whereupon the swan refolded itself, dove out of her hand, and slipped under the door without another sound.

Hermione was touched by the delightful little thing, and she got the distinct sense that it was a little attempt to show off.

Which got her to thinking - was her attraction to Snape all that obvious? She knew that Snape was aware that she liked to watch him eat. But did he realize that it extended beyond that?

If he did, what did that mean?

She wasn't sure. All she knew was, she was looking forward to dining with him without the obstruction of class terminating their time together.

She wondered what would happen instead.


	11. Chapter 11

The fantasies she had about what might happen at dinner made Hermione float all through Thursday despite herself. The students would have all gotten O's on their tests if she wasn't careful.

The one problem with meeting after the school day ended, instead of before it started, was that she was somewhat at the mercy of the students who attended her office hours.

This meant she was running later than she would have liked to meet with Snape. Then again he'd never specified a time. But the Great Hall served dinner at 7, so she wasn't able to get rid of her students until the gong rang.

"Aren't you coming?" asked one of the more clingy students, who seemed to want to keep bending Hermione's ear on the way there.

And Hermione, being the ever-enthusiastic young teacher she was, let her ear be bent for a full half hour as the 11-year-old sobbed about being socially isolated from the other people in his house.

After dismissing the child with a hug, a tchotchke from her desk-drawer (she had a bunch of cute toys from George's shop ready for this exact kind of occasion), and a promise to make another appointment, Hermione raced up the stairs to the teacher's wing, two at a time.

Snape was reading comfortably, leaning back in his chair and nibbling on bread and butter when she flew in the door. He looked up at her expectantly, looking for all the world like a landed English gentleman with little else to do than sit and enjoy the simple hedonistic pleasures of life.

"You're late," he said with the slightest scold in his voice.

"Were you worried I wouldn't come?" asked Hermione, feeling for all the world as if she'd stepped into a Victorian novel. Indeed, Snape looked slightly more dapper than usual, with a satin cravat and almost-skintight waistcoat with buttons that ran the entire length of his torso, from his succulent double chins to the smiling lower curve of his stomach.

He looked scornful, but didn't look at her. "Of course not." But she felt like he protested a little too forcefully.

The room was lit by candles under frosted glass, which lent the room a further antiquated air. Usually in the light of the morning, she didn't notice these details. Now, however, she looked down at what she was wearing herself. This morning - or, at least, last time she'd awoken from her time-turner nap - had been one of those mornings where the thing she'd put on was a bit more fancy than it'd looked on the hanger, but when it was on, she decided it looked so good she couldn't take it off.

Generally, in the school environment, her garb was conservative, taking a leaf out of McGonagall's book. This garment was no exception, but it _was _particularly lovely. A high collar, dark green silk brocade, tiny vestigial buttons along the collar that made a line down to her narrow wrist. Her hair was pulled back partly by a clip, just enough that it looked casual - she didn't have enough time to do the laborious task of straightening out all the curls with a flat-iron.

The one drawback of this particular dress was that it required a corset. So she was wearing one. With its aid, her middle was readjusted according to the needs of the garment, belly thrust low below the waist, breasts popping up, waist cinched as tightly as she could get with the aid of a doorknob to yank the laces into submission. She ultimately felt very sexy, though in retrospect it might not have been the best choice of outfit for eating herself silly in.

"You look fabulous," Hermione said, sitting and taking a piece of bread. "Just fabulous."

"Same to you," he said, folding his book and lazily tossing it onto the couch with a sweep of his arm. "What's the occasion?"

She was taken aback, having assumed that he'd dressed up for this dinner, and having assumed that he would assume the same.

It took her a moment to notice the silent peals of mirth in his eyes as he made eye contact with her. He was toying with her.

"Oh, no particular reason," she responded loftily, and grinned back at him. "Just dinner with a friend."

"I see," he said, running a hand absentmindedly - or was it? - up and down the buttons of his stomach. "Just a friend," he repeated carefully.

"Yeah, I mean," Hermione went on, "he's got a girlfriend, so, you know."

He looked back at her archly. "Have you spoken with him about the nature of his relationship with said girlfriend?"

She felt a twist in her lower abdomen. "Not in so many words," she responded.

Continuing to stroke the brocade of his waistcoat with one hand, in such a way that looked like he was truly enjoying it, he heaved out of his chair and walked over to the mantel to stare into the fire, his other hand behind his back.

"What if his relationship with said girlfriend was…flexible?"

Hermione felt a jolt of excitement thrill her veins.

"Erm. What would such a thing mean?" she asked, realizing her legs were trembling as though she were very cold.

He turned around and looked her in the eye, seeming to assess whether or not he should proceed. He did.

"You might ask him if, in an ethical and sensitive fashion, he was interested in pursuing an additional relationship with you."

"What," Hermione said, finding her breath was slipping away from her. "Like… an open marriage?"

He smiled long-sufferingly. "Sans the marriage, yes. Polyamory?"

She sat there thinking for a moment. She'd joked occasionally about _menage-a-trois _with Ron, as well as the possibility of them engaging covertly in an open marriage. But the idea of pursuing a relationship with a person who was already committed to someone else… that felt different.

What if Snape _was _the slimy git that Ron imagined? She wondered briefly if this was the sort of thing that married men used to convince naive girls to bed them. Polyamory. The word hung heavy in her gut.

"Uh," she said, finding her breaths were shallow and difficult, "uh."

She'd not been expecting this. If she had expected anything, it would have been along the lines of _Erika's not real_, or _Erika broke up with me this morning, _or _Erika's so far away, how about we keep each other company. _Honestly, any of those would have been better choices if he was planning on cheating on Erika with her.

Still, she was in doubt about the offer's authenticity. She didn't have any frame of reference for this.

"Is this a trick?" she asked. "I… I find it hard to believe that two people who love each other that way would agree to have sex with other people as part of their schema."

Snape was clearly disappointed, and sat down again.

"A moment," he said, and clapped his hands to summon Lowly. "Let's order. I'm starved."

Lowly showed up, bobbing brightly, and Snape didn't look up once as he ordered. If Hermione thought he ate a lot in the mornings, she was dumbfounded by the amount he ordered tonight. Two kinds of pasta (red and white sauces), lobster bisque, a whole roasted chicken with trimmings, an entire steak and kidney pie, a large quantity of rice biryani, nicoise salad, fish and chips, and cucumber salad. His selection was haphazard, almost fatalistic, as if he were ordering a cocktail of poisons without attention to what they were - apparently, the larger the quantity, the greater the likelihood of one of them successfully killing him.

Hermione looked at him in awe as she opened her mouth to order for herself, and she chosen a creamy, heavy pasta and some lobster bisque of her own, followed by cucumber salad.

They soon sat there, effectively drooling at the amount of food that was headed their ways.

"Can you really eat all that?" Hermione asked, thoroughly distracted from the problem at hand.

He just smiled, pressing his lips tightly together, and said succinctly, "We'll see."

Hermione closed her eyes and thought about how deliciously fat Snape was going to look after this meal - she knew he was in danger of bursting the buttons of his waistcoat, which were already straining.

But, ahem. She needed to sort out what this whole _polyamorous_ thing meant.

So, taking another bit of bread, she chewed thoughtfully and asked, "So tell me about what it means, that you're _polyamorous._" She pronounced the word carefully, and Snape smiled a little at her.

"She had a serious boyfriend before we met," Snape said. "She lives with him now. His name is Jean-Raoul."

"Jean-Raoul?" Hermione asked, and then nodded, as she filed this away. "I see. Continue."

Snape shrugged. "There's not that much to say. I was dating a girl but I hadn't deactivated my online profile from a dating site. I got a message from Erika asking her if I was interested in meeting. We coordinated, and she showed up, and I was intrigued by her - far more than by the other girl I had been dating for the past month. She was beautiful, vivacious, flirtatious, and drove me wild the moment I set eyes on her. And she was also interested in me, even though she already had a boyfriend."

He smiled, looking down into his glass of wine, which Lowly had poured before leaving.

"She didn't _need _a lover to make her life complete. If that had been the case, she'd be entirely set. She and Jean-Raoul had three years of solid relationship behind them, two years of which were poly in nature. She explained to me: she didn't need someone to love to make her life complete. What she _did _need was variety, and the additional stimulation of meeting new people. And the freedom to pursue romantic endeavors with them if she chose to. And - well - you can imagine why this appealed to me."

"Tell me," said Hermione. She had no intention of letting down her guard until she knew everything there was to know about the situation.

"What else," Snape said, "but the idea that someone would choose to be with me when they had no objective _need _to be with someone. At some points of my life, I would have accepted anyone who threw themselves at me, no matter their reasons for wanting to be with me. But at the point where Erika and I began to date, I had already played the lovelorn sap a few times - Lily being the greatest example, of course - and was fairly sick of it. It was a pattern that wasn't worth repeating, and since she was interested in dating me because she genuinely thought me interesting… well, that was what I wanted. I wanted to be appreciated for myself, not for what I could bring to the table in a relationship, so to speak."

He sighed and relaxed into his chair, sipping his wine. "She's wonderful," he said, "and she really helped me get to the...better-balanced place where I am today. I think she is my best friend, really, in this dismal world we live in. But I suppose I should clarify," he said gracefully, "she's not what you'd call my _primary_ girlfriend."

He took a deep breath, and added, "It's easier sometimes to pretend she is, especially among people who don't and won't understand. But neither she nor I has any desire to actually live our lives together the way a traditional couple might."

"Who _is _your primary girlfriend?" Hermione asked, dreading that there was yet another woman in Snape's heart.

His response was anticlimactic. Feigning ambivalence, he held up his glass to the light and swirled it. The rosy color fell onto the table. "No one, right now. But I would be interested in exploring you as a candidate."

Hermione felt her body grow tighter. "Erm, well." She took a deep breath. "I don't think I can give you an answer right away."

"Take your time," he drawled, "whatever happens, happens. It's taken me a month to adjust to the idea that you're not my student, and that you are, indeed, a consenting adult. It will take me even longer to get over the fact that you _used _to be my student, and I'm this attracted to you." He sighed. "Maybe you're still stuck in that place as well. I'm sure that if we proceed, that may cause some rifts down the line. And also," he added, though he lowered his head and let strands of loose sidebangs obscure his face, "if this is all you want to do with me - be friends - I can live with that. I think."

He took a deep breath and swallowed. "There. I think all my cards are on the table now."

She smiled at him. "I doubt it, you Slytherin," she said, sitting back and relaxing in her chair as well.

He appeared to be in pain, not looking at her directly, but peeping out at her through his hair. "So. What are your thoughts?"

"My thoughts," Hermione said, realizing that he'd just done the remarkable thing of basically giving her his heart to do with as she pleased. "I know that I wouldn't be able to live with _just_ being friends. I think it's clear that there's something too magnetic happening here to ignore. I admit that I don't know what to do. I don't exactly have enough information to make a conclusion towards having a relationship with you or… or not. But I do think that I want to. I just don't know what to make of this. I thought, truly, you were unable to engage with me in this way."

"Despite all my… erm… flirting?" he said, appearing to be on the verge of laughing nervously.

She nodded. "Gryffindor. Too trusting."

"Fair enough." He took a deep breath, his stomach heaving visibly. "So, it didn't occur to you that there might be the possibility of engaging with me romantically at all."

"No," Hermione said, "at least not ethically."

"But you wanted to," he clarified. "That much was evident."

"I mean," Hermione said, flushing to her roots, "I wouldn't have probably if you looked the way you had when I was in school."

It was his turn to blush. "R-really?" He rubbed his eyes deliberately, and opened them wide. "So. Wait. If I were in the best shape of my life, I wouldn't have been attractive to you?"

"I… I guess?" Hermione said, feeling herself tremble. "I mean, it's not exactly something I knew until I saw you at the end of August. I'd had a crush on you while I was in school, but it was different, you know?"

"So," he clarified, "in my current...shape...you find me exponentially more attractive than as the lithe, well-exercised man I was back then."

"That's what I'm saying, isn't it?" Hermione responded, swallowing hard against her less than ladylike reaction tightening in her cervix.

He shook his head in wonderment. "I'm so surprised," he said, his throat tight, "and I'm ever so pleased. Because I like myself better this way as well. But the reaction is far from universal, particularly among women."

"Isn't it weird," Hermione said, "how much importance society places on thinness? It's not exactly logical. Sure, from a biological standpoint, I guess it's harder to run from danger if you're fat, but at the same time, isn't it nice to have the _luxury_ of being fat? Isn't it nicer to know you'll likely never have to run from danger again?"

"Yes," he said, and he picked up his napkin, lowered his head, and dabbed at his eyes. "It's someone else's problem now. Not mine."

Hermione felt a rush of tenderness. She got up, stepped over to him, and, hesitantly, drew his hair away from his face.

"I don't know what this means, yet," she said, crouching to meet him at eye level, "but I'd like to kiss you."

His eyes were glassy, but the smile on his face was genuine. "Please do."

So she did.

And it was wonderful.


	12. Chapter 12

They broke away from each other reluctantly, but with promises in their eyes.

In the meantime, Lowly had snuck in and out, filled their wineglasses, plated their dinners, and departed without a sound.

"Well, I guess we can eat," Hermione said, looking at the spread. Her nose was accosted happily by the wonderful tapestry of smells.

"Sit closer," Snape said, and with a flick of his wrist he moved her chair from being across the table to being perpendicular to him.

She sat back down in it gently without an objection - _All the better to watch you chew, my dear_ - and picked up her fork.

"So," Snape was saying, as he elegantly sliced the meat from the chicken bones. "Have you ever had a crush on more than one person at once?"

"I… I actually have," said Hermione, feeling a little sad at having lost Harry with the whole Ron-being-gay thing.

Snape took a bite, swallowed, and prepared his next one, almost daintily. "Wouldn't you prefer to live in a world where dating both of them was more… accepted than not?"

"Well," Hermione said ruefully, "I'd have liked the chance, but what about jealousy?"

Snape chuckled. "If I'm not mistaken, you're thinking of Potter and Weasley."

"They're my best mates," Hermione responded sharply, "and I love both of them, in their ways."

Snape smiled resolutely. "I'll try not to judge you. How are they both?"

Hermione sighed. "Harry's married, Ron's in love with a Quidditch star, we're pretending I dumped Ron instead of the other way round, to keep his family from knowing that he's gay."

"That's...intense," Snape said, looking more amused than anything. "So you set yourself up against the wrath of Molly Weasley for him. How formidable."

Hermione shrugged. "Ron's preferred plan was for us to get married and have babies and pretend we actually enjoy fucking each other, and for me to let him go fuck dudes on weekends, and presumably for me to go fuck girls, because even though he professes to be gay, he doesn't want anyone else's dick inside me."

"I hope you don't pay attention to him in that respect," Snape said cooly, "Because otherwise that would be a significant problem for a relationship with me, if we are to form one."

"Oh, of course," Hermione said cheerfully. "If we become an item, I fully intend to fuck you. Quite a bit, actually."

"Good," Snape said, spots of color appearing on his cheeks, and he began to dive more heartily into the chicken trimmings of sauteed spinach, carrots, and onions.

Hermione poked her fork at a clove of garlic on his plate. "Can I have?"

"...yes," he said, his mouth full, and he swallowed. "But you can only have vegetables from my plate, you understand me?"

He added, with a grimace, "And potatoes. Fucking hate potatoes. Have all you want of those, if I'm so unfortunate as to receive them by accident."

Hermione decided to wait to prove about this aversion to potatoes, and kept her fork to herself, and twisted linguini around it. She was regretting not having gotten chicken in her pasta.

"If you want something of mine that's more substantial," Snape added, seeing her look, "order some for yourself."

Chided, Hermione nodded, and grabbed another clove of garlic from his chicken.

In response, he smiled at he and pushed the chicken towards her. "Well, I guess I can share. I don't think I can finish all this food, though I wonder if between the two of us, we can."

Hermione flushed again, and took several choice bits of chicken breast and thighs.

Snape pulled a large bowl of rice biryani towards him and began to eat steadily.

"One of the great advantages of living at Hogwarts again," he said dreamily, digging at his rice, "is the unlimited quantity and the incomparable quality of the food." He swallowed bites of the light biryani as fast as he could (and it was very fast, considering it was fluffy, oily rice, which he seemed to suck down his hungry gullet without much effort at all). "I admit, I dreamed about coming back here just to gorge myself. After so many years of living here, paying for every meal in the outside world was beginning to grate on me."

"I'd say the same," Hermione said, "but I was rolling in the dough at my Ministry job - no, don't look at me like that, I wasn't on the public advocate's office's payroll, there was some dodgy tax stuff going on - so going to elite London restaurants taught me better than to think that Hogwarts' food was the best on earth."

"To each their own," Snape said, toasting her with a spoonful of rice, "but I think it tastes all the better for being free."

"I'll grant you that," Hermione said with a smile, and finished her pasta, pushing the brimming bowl of bisque into her line of reach.

She sipped it with her spoon and nearly melted at the warm buttery goodness of it. "Mmm," she breathed, "this is really excellent."

Then, inspired, she took Snape's spoon and dipped it into his soup, and took it to his lips on his behalf.

He was clearly intrigued, and his face flushed red. But he swallowed the rice in his mouth and accepted the spoon without hesitation. "Mmm," he said, sitting back in his chair and putting two hands on his massive, increasingly-taut belly. "More, please."

Hermione was tickled pink to feed him the fatty brew, and he accepted several more bites of it, but eventually shook his head and picked up his fork again.

"Two things," he said, then amended, "no, three. First, that was lovely. I liked it a lot. Your interest in seeing me eat is… uncommonly exciting."

Hermione flushed. He also flushed, and cleared his throat to hide his emotion.

"Second," Snape said, "I prefer to save the heavier foods for last. If I can resist them. They are satiative, make one feel fuller faster. My preferred method is: carbohydrates first, with some proteins over time, and then as much heavy food as I can stomach."

Hermione nodded. "Understood," she said, pushing the bowl away.

"Third," he said, and he leaned forward, "I'd like to ask you a favor… if you could touch my stomach when you're feeding me, that would be...good. And, erm," his voice dropped lower, "talk about how big it's getting?"

"Sure, that's amenable to me," Hermione said brightly, and she gently wrestled the biryani spoon from his hand into hers. Then, as she scanned the table, she realized there was a serving spoon that might better serve the purpose of stuffing him. She grabbed the silver serving spoon and dipped it into the rice, brought it up sideways to Snape's face, and bid him, "Eat."

As obedient as a hog at a full trough, he did indeed eat from the spoon, his tongue sneaking out and lapping it out of the basin like a dog.

You can imagine what Hermione was thinking about as she watched him licking that rice so diligently, excitedly, and gently out of that spoon. (Hint: she wasn't imagining him licking something else out of a spoon - instead out of another kind of crevice.)

Highly aroused, she touched his rounding stomach and rubbed it tenderly as she fed him, and he moaned into his food whenever she touched a particularly sensitive spot.

Soon, though, he needed a break, and she scooted herself back slightly, and he sipped his wine and looked incredibly comfortable and portly, with one hand resting on the shelf his tummy made, the other holding his wine with elegant fingers.

"So jealousy," Hermione said, as he stifled a burp in his napkin, "Don't you get jealous of Jean-Raoul?"

He shrugged. "Jealous of Erika's time, certainly. She's incredibly busy. At first I was a bit afraid that her saying she was busy was her brushing me off. But she introduced me to one of her other non-primary lovers, and she assured me that Erika is truly just busy."

"How many partners does she have?" Hermione exclaimed, feeling horrified at the idea of talking with a metamour.

"Erm," Snape said, "Not entirely sure. I asked her at one point, and she gave me a list of people she counts herself as currently having some kind of relationship with. Granted, I'm closer to her than most of the people on the list - about half are people she only sees at conferences. But as far as a _number _goes, I think it's around fifteen, with fluctuations as relationships change and such."

Hermione frowned. "So she hooks up with people at conferences?"

"Yes," Snape said with a shrug. "Though granted, this phenomenon of bonking at conferences isn't that unusual - this is actually something that I've known about for some time. I just didn't realize that it was often a _poly_ thing. Instead, in my most jealous days, I thought it was just some large network of deviants that complicitly got together for orgies or something. Which, they do," he mused, "but I thought it was a great deal more sinister and exclusive than I've learned since."

"So, Erika has more partners than you can keep track of," Hermione said. "Would that be something I could expect out of a relationship with us?"

His face became stony at the proposal. "Not at all," he said, his voice nearly a growl. "I'm too possessive for that. If we start dating, Hermione," he said, carefully testing out using her first name, "I'd prefer a _much_ smaller circle between the two of us."

She smiled back. "I see. So you do have jealousy."

"It's… a different set of expectations,that I'd have," he responded. "I don't want to restrict you, of course. But I'm a lot less…"

He sighed, struggling to find words. Then he restarted.

"...I've already lost a lot to carelessness and errors," he said, not looking at her, "And while I'm excited to share a form of living with you that's vibrant and has the potential to enhance our overall life satisfaction, social support system networks, and all that rot, I can't be as carefree as Jean-Raoul and Erika. They have their form of poly. It happens to be compatible with my relationship with Erika. But I know that my own practice of poly looks different from theirs.

"And especially with...erm...you," he said, glancing up and glancing down again, "I'm not interested in something casual with you. That's because, on my own part, I don't care for casual relationships. But," he added, his voice getting lower, "I also know that I wouldn't want you to be in too many casual relationships either."

"Because of jealousy?" asked Hermione.

"To put it plainly," Snape said with a grimace. He didn't like to admit it, and he stabbed at the chicken again. He'd gotten most of the meat off it, so Hermione pushed forward the first plate of pasta.

"Thanks," he said, not glancing at her, tucking away a good forkful.

"Welcome," she said. She sat there thinking, listening to him chew, and she sipped her soup some more. "Yeah," she said at last, "I'm glad you said all that. It does make me feel like what you're saying is actually something that might work for me."

"I'm...glad," he said, looking up and smiling at her, still looking worried.

"What else are you thinking?" asked Hermione, somewhat puzzled. "Did I do something wrong?"

"Oh, no," Snape responded, taking another few bites, "I just… well…"

It took another reassuring glance from Hermione and a few bites more to get his nerve to say, "I was...worried?" He seemed to be trying the word out. "I… yes, I was worried that you were late today. It still hasn't shaken off."

"I am sorry," Hermione said gently. "There was a student."

Snape looked at her quizzically.

"Student in tears," she amended. "Tell me, do you often get first-years with social isolation issues? Or was that just 11-year-old me?"

Snape looked stricken, and stabbed another bit of chicken meat. "I didn't know you were one of them," he said. "If you'd brought it up, I'd have taken care of it."

"How?" Hermione asked, "because I don't see the other teachers doing anything else other than saying 'go join a club!,' which is profoundly unhelpful as you might guess."

"I had my methods," Snape said, "and actually, I'm ashamed that I haven't thought to reinstate them. I don't know...who took over head of Slytherin House?"

"Some tosser named Reginald Floss," Hermione said off-handedly. "I haven't spoken with him. He's not as ancient of blood as the Malfoys or Blacks, but he's from an older family, so it seems."

"I know the name," Snape said with a tone of disgust. "Taught Reginald when he was in his last three years. He's…" He paused. "Let's just say, I hope he's changed as much as I have, with the war."

"I can't speak to that," Hermione reiterated, "never talked to him."

"I see," Severus said, and went on, "So what I did is fairly simple, though honestly it should be school policy: all students in Slytherin house, when I was head, had randomly-assigned study groups that met continuously throughout the year, with the requirement of meeting at least twice or three times a week during study period."

He took a few bites, swallowed, and went on, "To deal with administrative duties, I assigned a house head boy and girl to manage, and whenever an issue came up that was beyond the seventh-years, they came to me. For the most part, these groups ran themselves. And whenever a student from another house was brought to my attention, I gave them a role in one of the groups."

"Brilliant," Hermione said sadly. "I wish that I'd spoken with you, though I'm not sure I would have wanted to be friends with Slytherins."

"Is that so?" he said, somewhat amused. "Think back, Granger. I doubt your beliefs about the houses were as firm back then. I think you might have been more receptive, if you were as lonely as you say you were. What might have mattered more to you - what the other houses said about Slytherin malice, or concrete evidence against this presumed truth?"

"Besides," he added for good measure, "we were the much-maligned house. No other house withstood so much abuse from the rest of the world. I think you might have been sympathetic to our… underdog status… same as any other marginalized group you care about."

Knowing full well he had won, he threw his hair back proudly.

She nodded gravely, thinking about the little girl she'd been, crying in the bathroom. "You know, I think you are right." She sighed. "So, I had no idea you were a fan of social interventions," she said, finding herself feeling more impressed by him than ever. "What inspired it?"

He looked at her darkly. "What else but creating the resource I wish I'd had?"

She nodded solemnly. She thought of him so much as being part of the tapestry of Slytherin that she did not often consider that he might not have fit in well there, either .

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Don't be bloody sorry," he snapped, not looking at her, stabbing his food viciously. "You didn't do it to me. If you must pity me for anything, pity me for the things I couldn't have changed, not the things that were a result of my poor choices and unfortunate circumstances. I'd prefer you feel pleased that I did something about it."

"I am," Hermione said. "Very pleased." She just looked at him until he looked up at her, and saw how softly she was gazing. His face became less strained.

"What on earth were you doing in the public advocate's office," he muttered, "your skills were certainly wasted there."

Not sure how to respond, Hermione let her fingers wander up to her hair, and she played with it a little, as she thought. Snape continued eating, though slower than before, as he seemed to be growing full. He pushed away the empty plate of pasta, gave up on the fairly-picked-dry chicken, and settled the steak-and-kidney pie in front of him.

"So since neither of us is head of house," Hermione said, "what do you suppose we should do to help create more social connections between the students?"

He appeared to give the question all the consideration it was due. "Two possibilities that might be effective," he said slowly, unearthing the meat from the pie with a practiced air. "First, we might lobby Professor Floss to do what I did. All the structures are there. The sixth and seventh-years at least will remember the system from their first and second years. Indeed," he said, finding himself keenly interested, "I'd like to see how those students have turned out, and what their thoughts are regarding the study groups."

Hermione nodded. "I think it'd be worth a try. But I think he might object on the grounds that implementing this mid-year would be difficult."

"Not if we pretend it's part of our larger plan," Severus said, smirking.

He took a deep breath, and paused, letting the food settle in his stomach. "If I remember correctly, my last Slytherin head girl wrote some excellent modules for discussion, though many of them were inconsistent, without any real logical flow, and didn't precisely jive."

Three quiet bites later, and he said, "I can't tell you how _nice _it is to talk about pedagogy and know that there's an actual chance that I can do the things I want to do."

"Instead of having your attention potentially drawn at any moment to the duties of a more sinister nature?" Hermione said, feeling the grief on his behalf. "I can understand that frustration. As it is, I focus myself so wholly and completely on my passions that I feel I don't have enough time to do the things I intend to do, without that obstacle."

"Time is a luxury," Severus said. "And for a while - before your cohort, because that's when everything turned for the worse - time was something I had an abundance of. I worked my ass off in order to keep my mind out of the darker places it was wont to wander. I know I was a beast of a man for most of the time you were at school," he said sullenly, "but I swear to you, I wasn't quite as bad before Mr. Potter arrived and the war shifted out of dormant."

"I mean," he went on, "I don't know what you thought of your seventh year, once you came back, but I assume it was much more quiet and uneventful than your other years."

"It was, Hermione said with a laugh. "It didn't quite feel the same, somehow."

Snape nodded sagely. "That's how it was before the war, before Quirrell showed his ugly face and the Dark Lord returned. While Dumbledore put on a placid, unconcerned front to the school about the whole matter, he was sending me hither and thither on personal errands of increasing levels of urgency. Of course, I took out the stress on the wrong set of people - the students."

He sighed deeply. "I particularly wish I had been able to convince Albus to remove Potter from his blood family. I personally feel that his insistence on the power of blood magic was a lot of twaddle; I myself know that the power of a loving environment provides so many other tangible and rewarding benefits that, in my professional view, would far outweigh the importance of any protection that blood might provide."

He grimaced. "I almost suspect that he intentionally wanted Potter to stay in that environment for other… more unsavory reasons."

A chill settled on the room, as Snape's words fell on ears that were highly attuned to this exact problem.

"I wanted to do more, too," Hermione said softly. "I tried to convince Harry to come and stay with my parents and me - they would have loved having him. But he always just relied on Dumbledore's good faith. I wrote him loads of letters, but I felt like they weren't that helpful."

"I argued with Albus for hours," Snape responded, sinking deeper into his chair, "but I never could manage him to change his mind. And unfortunately, Albus never argued out loud. Instead he spent so much time going 'he's got Lily's eyes! he's got James Potter's physique and bravado!' that it clouded my judgment where the boy was concerned."

He looked completely and utterly miserable.

"Before Potter came to school, I just pretended he didn't exist. But then Albus started priming me, in the guise of 'reminding me' to 'not let my feelings get in the way of my professionalism.' But I think his attempts were not in good faith," he said, shaking his head. "I didn't realize this until a year or so ago. I… I hestiate to say this, because I don't want to create the sense that I'm trying to excuse my actions by attributing them to some external locus of control…"

He took a breath, and looked at Hermione as if for permission to finish his thought. She nodded, supportive.

"..I felt like Dumbledore was deliberately trying to make me hate the child. A child that, otherwise, I would have been happy to pretend didn't exist."

He shrank into himself even more, and pushed his plate away from him.

"Now, granted," Snape said carefully, "he was incredibly supportive of Potter having you and Weasley as friends. But whenever an adult started to become involved in Potter's life, Albus did his best to keep them apart. I saw it several times. With Black - now granted, I'd probably have made that call as well, because Black was unprincipled and a bully same as James was - and with Remus Lupin."

"He had Hagrid," Hermione said.

"Yes," Snape said, pithily, "but Hagrid wasn't exactly a powerful wizard. A powerful friend, sure, but he didn't exactly have the skills or desire to, for example, take over the wizarding world. A harmless friend," he said with a smile.

Hermione began laughing. "What," she said, "you think Dumbledore was trying to break a future Tom Riddle?"

"Perhaps," Snape said, a little ashamed. "I don't know for sure. Maybe. Why else would he insist on giving the boy so many unreasonable expectations, forcing him to go back to an abusive home every fucking summer, and putting him in close proximity with someone who hated him as much as I did for over a year?"

Oh. Hermione had forgotten about the Occulmency lessons. She realized that snape probably knew Harry better, on some level, than she ever had or could.

"Granted," he said, "i felt like albus was using those lessons as a punishment for me, which i still think is true. But I was so, _so _angry," Snape said. "I wasn't safe for him. But Albus insisted that I work with the boy anyway. Can you imagine," he said, shaking his head. "Being in this school skews your perspective of reality.

Once I was out of it, I realized what lunacy Dumbledore was guilty of. And I can't help but hold my actions against myself. What if I had been able to see the similarities and not the differences between my own upbringing and Potter's? Who knows," Snape said, looking at the floor with undue interest, "maybe he and I would have found support in each other. Or something."

Hermione felt a shiver of sadness and empathy. "I don't know how to respond," she said, "I'm listening, but I don't know what to tell you. It's a terrifying thought, that Dumbledore might have wanted to cripple Harry so badly."

"It is," Snape said, "but do you doubt it? If he felt that it was for the greater good of the wizarding world, do you doubt for one moment that Dumbledore would have gone that far?"

And this, Hermione could not argue.

"I don't doubt it," she said, anger rising in her throat. "I don't at all."

"But no matter what I said or did," Snape said, "I always felt like Mr. Potter deserved it," he said with an eyeroll. "God. What a way to lose perspective. But I don't know how Albus could have expected otherwise."

"He should have lightened your load," Hermione affirmed.

"Yes," Severus replied, "and he didn't." He pushed away the remains of the steak-and-kidney pie, in favor of the second plate of pasta with red sauce.

Hermione was looking a little deeper than at Snape's change of food, however. Not wanting to depress him, she kept this thought to herself.

_It looks like Dumbledore did a good job of breaking you, too, Severus Snape. And I don't think that was an accident, either. _

"But all this is old news," he added, shaking away his own thoughts. "Let's go back to talking about this student."

Hermione shrugged and allowed herself to move out of this intense topic. "I like study groups," she said , "but what other ideas do you have? You said you had two."

"Yes," he responded, enthusiastically, pulling the plate back towards him. She wasn't sure if he was doing this unconsciously or consciously, but it seemed to be a clear indication of his mood. "The other one that comes to mind is to just make such a study group a requirement of your class. One component of this: the hated group project."

Hermione groaned. "No," she said , "I really genuinely hate them. They always result in the smart ones taking charge and the rest goofing off."

"I see you have some experience in this department," Snape said with a laugh that conveyed all too well his own familiarity with the phenomenon. "Well, that's fine. Just thought I would mention it."

"That's not fair," Hermione said, swatting him flirtatiously. "Give me another option. That one doesn't count."

"I suppose," he said, voraciously swallowing a mouthful of pasta, "that you could make this a non-graded study group. Requirements entail presenting once a week in class on a topic. Demand a routine set of objectives to be met. Just provide enough laxness in the assignment to foster some idleness, and hopefully some bonding."

"That's an idea," she said. But then something came to mind. "I think I have another potential solution."

"Tell me," he said, his eyes sharp.

"I don't know what you might think of this," she said, "but I think that, for those particularly gifted students, it would be a great thing to institute an honors seminar."

"What do you mean?" he asked.

It boggled her mind that he'd never heard of such a thing.

"It's a Muggle thing," she said, "a class for academically strong students to join together. Just not based on N.E.W.T.S. It's based on raw academic ability, which means it includes some students who are too bored to bother with doing well on their studies in normal classes."

He furrowed his brow. "So what do you envision?"

She took a few significant bites of pasta. "I envision," she said, grandly, "a space for students of every house. A space for those who, based on teacher assessment early in the first year, are identified as the brightest and the best, but who also are the most likely not to fit in with their peers. A space where these students can have a meeting of minds, so to speak, and learn that intelligence transcends house systems." She sighed. "I went to a private school and took honors classes from almost preschool onward. My parents were shocked that there was no gifted student track at Hogwarts, though I convinced them that it was worth sending me there because everyone at my school was as smart as I was."

She laughed, thinking back on it. "It was worth it, but just barely. They'd never have let me come here if they knew the truth."

"I'd like to ask more about that later," Snape replied warmly. "So what you're saying is: we group together different subjects, why not also group together different people based on aptitude, outside of these subjects."

"Yes," Hermione said, "from a lower level than fifth year. Because it seems a lot of the social benefits just don't happen when you have this kind of gifted class so late in the academic track."

"I do wonder if in the past, that was what the house system is intended to serve as," Severus said. "Truth be told, it always puzzled me why the founders thought it was a good idea to group people based on similar personality traits but not things like academic skills. It seems an unfortunate way of distributing talent in lieu of concentrating it and making that talent better. But, if the house system did function like a series of subject-specific houses," he realized, squinting at her as if to assess her reaction, "would that dismantle your theory regarding the dual personalities?"

Hermione smiled. This man was so smart and attractive. What was she doing just sitting with him here, talking to him?

"How about," she said with a smile, "we change the subject. I'm starting to lose focus." With a swoop of her hand, her fingers landed on the top of his overstuffed belly and went lower, lower, lower, until she felt the firm bulge of his cock beneath his trousers. Which trousers, incidentally, were unbuttoned (not surprising, given the quantity of food he had eaten this evening).

"Oh are you?" He asked with a bit of a grin. "Or are you just dodging the question?"

She just smiled in response.

"Well," he said, "I just want to finish my thought." He paused, seeming to wait for her permission.

"Go ahead," she said, retracting her hand, and she smiled at him.

He smiled back, benevolently. "Suffice it to say that, I think I would be excited to have an honors seminar. I think it would fill an unmet need at Hogwarts, and I think that it could be potentially very beneficial for students who are lacking friends and are otherwise spread out across houses."

"But let's not forget," Hermione said, "that this would ideally not involve more work for the poor dears, but merely access to a higher level of thinking than they're used to."

"This I like, quite a lot," he responded with utter delight. "But let's stop now," he said and gestured for her to come closer. "Now," he said with a low rumble, "may I ask you a highly unprofessional and ungentlemanly question, Miss Granger?"

"Certainly you may ask, but I might not answer," she responded with a smile. She knew there was little she wouldn't answer honestly at this point in their exciting new relationship - since really, the questions about poly that she still had notwithstanding, it was clear they were at least going to try out some form of relationship - but he seemed to play well against her occasional coquettish affectations.

"Why on earth," he said, leaning forward, "did you wear a corset to dinner?" He hesitantly advanced his hand to touch her abdomen, though he hovered over the fabric until she gently pushed his hand forward to meet the brocade.

"Seems a bit silly for coming to dinner in," he went on, "Like wearing a swimsuit to visit Finland in winter."

"Also it's a little strange for someone who likes her own fat so much," Hermione said with a laugh.

"Yes, that also," he said.

"It just makes me look sexy," she said, "moves my bulges from one place to another in interesting ways."

"As long as it's not a matter of trying to look thinner," he said, throatily, "I approve."

His fingers landed on the curve of steel boning that made her waist curve succulently, and Hermione felt her breath suddenly intake in pleasure.

"Yes," she whispered "touch me more there."

He turned his chair abruptly and began to grab her stomach fat on either side with both of his hands. While it was tightly compacted, he could still grab it under the cloth.

"Yes," she murmured at this touch, feeling nearly faint with desire.

Then, with an expert motion, he reached around her, lifted her from her chair into his lap, and drew her close. Given Hermione's own heavying build, it was evident that for an "unexercised" man, he was still fucking strong.

"Oh my," she whispered, and kissed him deeply.


	13. Chapter 13

... *waves* Hi readers! Guess what - because I don't want to violate Fanfiction dot net's policies regarding mature content, I'm not posting most of this chapter here! Instead you can find it on the other place I'm posting this story, Archive of our Own. You can find this chapter when you search for my username on that site, MollyWeisser11. (Just google "MollyWeisser11 archiveofourown" and go to Chapter 13.)

I'd also like to take a moment to give a shoutout to THA BEZT REVIEWER OF THE 21st CENTURY whose name is **arynwy**! Seriously I would NOT have posted as much or as frequently had not this special person been providing me lots of muse inspiration to keep writing.

in other news: I'm not sure when I want to wrap this story, but I'm getting kinnnnnnda near that point? I mean when I get to the Happily Ever After place, that's when I'll quit, but we're over halfway there. We've got some plot points to wrap up still, of course - but here's an alert to let you know that basically if you have any burning questions, you better ask soon, because this story is approaching its denouement, and chances are I won't remember to address these things without reminders.

Thanks for following and such, I'm glad this story has been a success for some reason. **Please check out my other fics** which are sadly not well-reviewed at all, they're all feedism related. (Anyone aside from Aris_Silverfin as big a fan of Fat!Lock as I am?)

...

They lay there in the slightly darker room, breathing heavily together, and Snape murmured, "Well, I don't know what I expected, but I think you just blew my bloody mind."

"Agreed," Hermione said, sinking into the pillows with a sigh. "Here's to more where that came from. But not tonight."

"Not tonight," agreed Snape, then he laughed. "You know, I had planned for us to have dessert, but I don't feel a need for it this moment."

Hermione sat straight up in bed, immediately invigorated. "You don't?"

This response made Snape chuckle, and he pulled at her to lay down again. "All right, now you've alerted me to the possibility that I *might* have enough energy to at least watch you eat."

"Dessert is the best part of every meal," she said without a trace of irony, and laughing more, he clapped his hands.

"I guess we can have dessert in bed."

... again please go check out A03 for the rest of this highly sexy and interesting (in my honest opinion) chapter. ...


	14. Chapter 14

Hi folks! Same deal as last chapter. Please check A03 for the rest of the chapter. (what I've included below is the first part.)

.../...

They snuggled under the duvet together, Hermione clinging closely to him, Snape gently stroking her.

"I like the way you feel," she whispered, nestling her face between his heavy masculine breasts, which shook as he shivered with the pleasure of feeling her breath on his sternum.

"I like the way you feel me," he responded, letting a hand cup her succulent bottom. She felt every bit as squishy and soft as she looked, like smooth clean fondant on a marshmallow cake.

They relaxed there for a time, then Lowly arrived, bringing a large side-table with her, decked with a lace tablecloth and a fetching arrangement of fresh-picked red ivy, a scraggly few bits of heather, water mint, and Rose of Sharon berries. Lowly left as swiftly as she'd come, presumably to get the food.

"It's late in the season for heather," Hermione said, smiling brightly at the pale white flowers, and looked at Snape. "Is this your doing?"

He ducked his head, as if to conceal a smile. "I have a few spots I know to look."

"You're too precious," she said, kissing him on the cheek. "I demand at some point you show me. I wouldn't know where to look."

He seemed confused for a moment, then realized that, by default, she'd rarely, if ever, left Hogwarts' grounds to go into the wilderness of the moors around it before. "Oh," he said, "Yes, certainly. Any time. On days I go, I usually leave after lunch and return by dinner. Why bother going into town to get rowan berries, yarrow, burdock, asphodel, and such when I can very easily go out and collect it myself? Especially when Hogsmeade shopkeepers charge such outrageous prices?"

"I'm game," she said, rolling over onto her belly and looking at him with a flirtatious peek from over her arm. "But for the moment, I'm hungry."

"I fully intend to feed you into a state of satiation so complete that you will have no desire whatsoever to go to your classes tomorrow," he said with a subtle grin.

.../...

BTW: I'm surprised at the number of readers (okay, well, two, but whatever) providing UNSOLICITED ADVICE questioning my decision to post most of the chapter on A03. Who the heck asked you?! As someone who has had multiple fics pulled from Fanfiction dot net (on my other accounts) I'm sure as hell not taking any chances with this stuff. I made an informed decision based on both previous experience as well as re-reading the policies carefully before posting. I reserve the right to snark at any further reviews to this effect. If you can't say **anything nice, **don't say anything at all. Yippee-kai-yay.


	15. Chapter 15

The next morning brought Hermione to reluctantly - grumpily - face the sunlight. Crookshanks stalked from the end of her bed and meowed his high-density smelly breath in her face, and she pushed his cheek away from her nose and groaned.

"Fine," she said begrudgingly, and slipped out of bed. Of course she'd woken up ten minutes before the alarm rang - just enough time for her to go back to sleep and luxuriate in the spare time if she wasn't dealing with an irritable kneazle.

She poured herself some cool chocolate milk from the icebox, filled Crookshanks' bowl, and patted his butt as he set to it hungrily. She'd been a little generous with him, and his belly was full and round, and he was always ravenous.

She sat down to sip at her milk, and found a swan on her table, curled into a delicate rose that unfurled when she picked it up.

_You're right,_ was all it said, to start, _I need space today. But tomorrow? Meet at great hall for lunch then go out on moors?_

"Yes," she said, and the swan flapped its wings and disappeared under the door. She was a little crestfallen that she wouldn't see him today, but as she thought about it, she realized it was a good thing. She needed some time without distractions for serious grading that she had put off all week. As well as thinking about what on earth she wanted to do with this captivating man who wanted her to be his best girl.

She took her breakfast meal in her room, eating light because she did feel a little overfull from yesterday, and grabbed her things and trudged down to the classroom, where she graded furiously until the bell rang.

She took her breakfast meal in her room, eating light because she did feel a little overfull from yesterday, and grabbed her things and trudged down to the classroom, where she graded furiously until the bell rang, and she began teaching her classes for the day.

She could only relax once she'd gone forward and back a few times with the timeturner and completed her full 'day' of teaching (which of course was considerably longer than a day because of zipping around back and forth through time).

It felt, at this point, like it'd been forever since she'd seen Snape, and she almost felt like she was a single woman. She'd never felt this detached from someone when she was starting a relationship with them. With Ron and Viktor, she'd been all over them every second they were in private, and she devoted every waking moment she could to being with them.

But for some reason, this relationship with Snape was already very different in how it felt. She did actually feel lonely. She'd never felt lonely in a relationship before.

But then again, perhaps it was the weather, which was slipping from warm September sunniness to the cooler days of October.

The evening was heavy in the atmosphere, making her feel gloomy, and she decided to nip out to the gardens for a breath of fresh air. The days were only going to get shorter, she reasoned, and the nights were only going to get longer, and she really needed to savor whatever warmth she could find before the castle was plagued by the drafts and freezes of winter.

The gardens were lovely by moonlight. It was a waning moon, precisely fitting her mood. She felt the pain of things slipping away, finally, after many years of internal torture.

She was so glad he was alive, first and foremost. And she was so glad that he seemed to be happy.

It wasn't something she was likely to admit to anyone, much less Snape, but leaving him there in the Shrieking Shack without a shred of decency or courage on her part - it was one of the most shameful things she'd ever not done. And being that she was a girl who lived on the power of regret-for-having-done-something-is-better-than-regretting-having-not-done-something, well, that made it worse.

She sat down in an iron chair and slipped off her shoes; her feet ached with being trod upon all day, and she massaged them gently with her thumb as she edited scroll after scroll of script.

It was strange, how she found herself assigning essay after essay these days, when as a student she'd vowed never to assign an essay in class if *she* were ever the teacher.

Those days, she'd been filled with delusions about making classes some sort of elite symposium, where it was assumed that everyone had, indeed, completed their work, and instead they talked about things on a different kind of level - it wasn't flavored like a remedy for uneducation, but flavored like a fine wine of intelligence and wisdom. Something like that.

But of course when you got down to brass tacks, teaching a room full of kids, even sixth-years and seventh-years, was like herding kneazles, and time after time again she found that assigning the standard essay was her recourse.

It saddened her to see so much important content reduced to a shred of truth, bolstered by assumptions, grandiose generalizations, and limping run-ons, but it was better than not forcing the dunderheads to think about these things at all.

She found herself looking up at the gazebo near her often, and her eyes snagged on shadows until they were assured that there was no man in a cloak concealed there, watching her protectively.

It made her almost laugh aloud to think that Snape, as large and fat as he was now, might conceivably hide in the shadows of a ramshackle gazebo. She knew she would actually see him right away, if he *were* there, but that didn't stop her from looking.

He was, indeed, the sort of person who would get stuck in one's imagination and never leave.

Thank goodness he'd left the domains of her imagination, and the replayed scenes of horror and self-hatred, to manifest so pleasantly here at Hogwarts.

As she thought about him, she felt pangs of jealous heat, despite herself, towards Erika. Hermione knew she had no claim to Snape - none whatsoever - and that he was an adult, and he was perfectly able to choose a person to be his close friend and fuckbuddy without Hermione's intervention.

But Hermione was feeling increasingly like she didn't know him as well as she thought she deserved to - and that was because she didn't know Erika.

It was uncharitable, but she imagined Erika to be some monstrous person who used and disposed of lovers, but dragged them along by playing to their most vulnerable bits.

After all, hadn't Snape said that Erika hadn't seen him shirtless in *years*? If Erika was so shallow that she wouldn't catch on when Snape was struggling with his self-image, what worth did she have, and what kind of claim could she justify towards Snape's heart?

And, thinking about it more: What was it that had made him gain so much weight so fast, Hermione's train of thought continued. What had happened to him?

The only things she could think of were magic-related, and therefore not likely contenders.

It wasn't just aging. Not everyone who got old also got fat, and Snape was so lean for so long, it made no sense that he would just up and balloon up so swiftly.

Her mind teased at her with possibilities, but none of which seemed likely.

In any case, she puzzled over these questions as she mused among the ivy, fading red, and the gentle murmur of the fountain bubbling, and the gloomy shadows of the gazebo, and the increasingly-cold feeling of the iron chair and table.

Eventually she tired and picked up to go back up to her room, but she realized as she got up to go that there *was* a shadow in the gazebo. And this shadow was lighting a cigarette.

"Erm," she said, putting her satchel on her shoulder, "Hello?"

She was surprised to see Neville standing there, scratching out his cigarette hastily on the ground with his boot, as if she were his grandmum who'd caught him.

"'Mione," he said, smiling as much as he could muster. Which wasn't all that much, it looked like.

No, Neville looked the worse for wear. Where Snape had gotten fatter over the past five years, Neville had gotten leaner. He was haggard now, no longer the double-chinned, roly-poly boy of Gryffindor house.

It made Hermione sad, frankly.

"How are you? We haven't talked much since school started," Hermione said, approaching him gently. She considered whether or not to hug him, but he didn't hesitate, and he grabbed her around the shoulders and held her tightly, as if dreading letting go.

"Now, now, I'm not going to float away," she said, patting him between the shoulder blades. He squeezed her tightly again and reluctantly broke away.

"What's happening," he said with a whisper, fingering his cigarette case again, and he looked at Hermione for permission.

"Go ahead," she said, shaking her hand at him, "just don't blow in my face."

"Sorry," he apologized, and lit up with his wand. He inhaled deeply, looking up at the waning moon, and didn't look at her as he exhaled.

"You don't seem well," Hermione said, leaning against one of the gazebo's supportive poles. "You tell me *what's happening.*"

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath again, and seemed to visibly relax.

She realized the smell of his smoke was strange, and it took her a moment to recognize it. Neville was smoking marijuana.

"Funny," she said, as he remained silent, "I wouldn't have pegged you to choose wacky backy."

"It's not what it looks like," he said with a whimper that tried to be a growl. He took a deep breath again and leaned against the railing, closing his eyes. "I'm not doing so well, you're right."

"What is it?" Hermione asked, realizing that, indeed, there was something truly wrong.

He looked at her with sad eyes.

"Come on," she said with a whisper, "it can't be that bad."

He nodded. "It is."

"But..."

She tried to ask him *why hasn't the wizarding world cured this yet,* but the words got stuck in her throat. Fortunately, this gave her a chance to reconsider.

"I'm so sorry," she said. "I'm so, so sorry." She took a deep breath. "What kind?"

Neville grimaced. "Cancer of the lymph."

She looked at him, and their eyes met, and she found herself tearing up.

"I'm so, so sorry," she whispered.

"It is what it is," he said, taking another breath of his joint. "I'll probably survive it. Statistically speaking. They didn't catch it as early as they could have... but no one's to blame for that. Not really," he said, but there was something about his voice that indicated that he did indeed blame someone.

Hermione didn't say anything, and Neville took another few deep breaths.

"They all just thought I was losing weight because I was becoming more healthy or something," he went on, his voice cold. "They all congratulated me on my portion control. Did anyone check my lymph nodes until they were swollen and painful? No. When I went to the healers for chest pain and constant fatigue, they all just told me to drink more water and take vitamin D."

He looked miserable, and slumped more into himself.

"I'm so sorry," Hermione whispered. She felt a variety of emotions - a desire to help, a desire to ease his pain, a desire to find a preventative cure. "How long has this been going on?"

He shrugged. "Since last school year. It's sometimes better, sometimes worse. Mostly worse."

He took a deep breath. "But what can you do. I just ask you don't tell my grandmarm. It's hard enough trying to keep it from McGonagall and the rest."

"Why not tell them?" Hermione exclaimed.

"What, and lose my position, which I just got?" he said, "Risk looking weak and incompetent, yet again? No!

"Moreover," he added, "it's my own private health matter. I have no desire to be pitied. I've had enough of that for one lifetime." He shook his head, evidentially regretting things in the past.

Hermione saw his pain, and wanted to do something, so she asked, "What can I do to help?"

Neville snorted, which was strange to see. He'd become bitter with his disease.

"Nothing you'd actually do for me," he said with a hollow laugh. "Nothing that anyone'd do for me, these days."

"What do you mean?" Hermione asked.

Neville looked at her squarely, then, evidentially deciding he could risk telling her, said flatly, "Luna and I broke it off."

"Oh," Hermione said, a sad weight sinking into her stomach. "Oh."

"Yeah," Neville said, and his face started to clearly tear up, and he began to cry. He sank down onto the ground and sat there, curled into a ball, and he sobbed. "I… I just want to be held," he whimpered, "I want someone to tell me it'll be all right. I want to be cuddled, and kissed, and held, and sucked off once in a while, and told that I'm not alone. That's what I want," he said, choking up on his own words, "and I may as well say it, since I'm being a bloody fool right now, but Hermione, I've always carried a torch for you. And if you want me to be completely honest - I want you to care about me, at least a little, and hold me and tell me it will be all right. Because I'd trust it, from you. And maybe I won't die alone."

Now none of these feelings were ones that Hermione had ever reciprocated. She'd never thought of Neville more than a friend, though granted she'd occasionally noticed the way his pants were just a trifle too tight, and his belly was hanging pudgily over his belt. But she'd been so consumed with her school-wifery of Ron and Harry that Neville simply hadn't been observed by her.

She was observing him now. And she was wishing that she wasn't entering a pseudo-relationship with Snape right this very moment.

"Perhaps it's just my infatigable do-gooder instincts," she said softly, kneeling and putting a hand on his shoulder, "but I'd like to be that person, at least do some of those things."

He was genuinely startled, and his dew-kissed eyes fluttered open. He was weak and fragile, and inspired all sorts of tender feelings in her breast.

Dammit all. This was the same sort of problem she had with Harry and Ron. She couldn't help but be attracted to any attractive figure that sat in front of her.

Hm. Actually. This was the same sort of problem she had with Harry and Ron - but there was a possible fix.

"So, erm," Hermione said, "I don't know what or how much we can do, or how far we can go, since, erm, I'm kinda starting a new relationship right now."

Neville retreated as self-consciously as a snail. "Oh, then, never mind, I'm sorry, please, I didn't know. Forgive me."

"No," Hermione said, "you misunderstand. This particular relationship, I think, has some… room… for a kind of arrangement that would be satisfying to both yourself and me."

Neville looked at her quizzically, but he was clearly not impressed.

"I don't think I want to be part of that," he said, sadly. "I mean…"

He hesitated, and his tongue passed over his lips. He was clearly weighing the benefits of being with Hermione and not, and it was not an intuitive decision.

"Who," he said at last, "is this other relationship with? Someone I know?"

"Erm," Hermione said, and she imagined at once that Neville's reaction would be volcanic. "I don't know that I want to talk about the specifics, exactly. I'm not sure what he and I are doing right now. But," she added, grasping him in both arms and cradling him, "I know that I want to be here for you. Even if it's a bit late."

He continued to cry quietly into her shoulder, clearly resonating with the feeling of having let his burden down for the first time in a long while.

It felt so strange, knowing that she had an agreement with Snape and yet here she was, entirely permitted to indulge her desire to comfort Neville in whatever way she chose. Though granted, she realized that she and Snape had far from described exactly what the parameters of their relationship were.

In any case, she'd see him tomorrow, hopefully they'd be able to stave off having sex for long enough to see where their boundaries lay, and then she'd see where Neville fit into all this.

He seemed to cry for an eternity, there in the gardens, but Hermione was compassionate to every tear, and she didn't feel begrudging one bit.

There was, as it turned out, only one thing that distracted Neville from his physical and emotional pain enough to stop crying - and that was a lovely, deep kiss.


	16. Chapter 16

Saturday breakfast was leisurely and wonderful, with scones and jam, but Hermione did not overindulge. She had kept her meals light throughout the past few days, always leaving the table a little hungry.

If Snape liked to watch her eat, then by golly, she would eat.

The sun was running its paces faster and faster through the sky, so when she got into the Great Hall for lunch, the sun was shining through the windows already, and all the students were lazily trickling in from whatever activities they'd been at all morning (including sleeping, she assumed).

Snape was already there, even though she thought she was early herself, and he was staring coldly in the direction of the Slytherin table.

"You all right?" she asked as she approached him, and gently stroked the back of his hand.

He cast her a warning look, and it was all she needed to know she needed to back off.

"I get it," she said with a nod, and sat down, her eyes drifting in the direction of his own gaze. Two Hufflepuff pranksters, dressed in black from head to toe, including synthetic, unnaturally dark long tresses, were throwing bedpillows at each other over the dining table, the feathers spewing everywhere.

Hermione wasn't sure immediately what had happened, but she watched as one of them - a 2nd year named Milly - grabbed all the pillows again and - to Hermione's shock - shoved them up her robes, creating an enormous round belly, complete with rolls. Speaking of - Milly's compatriot, Roveric, grabbed several sweet pastries from the table and gave them to the other prankster, and Milly smeared her face with them, and took a few enormous bites to fill out her cheeks.

"I'm Professor Serious Snaps," she said, deadpan, "and I lurk the castle at night because I'm still searching for the lost breakfasts of Christmases past."

This was met with uproarious hooting and applause, to which the budding actress crowed with delight, "Detention, detention for all of you! Except for Slytherins. You get to crawl up on my belly for the warmth."

Hermione stood, and cast one look at Snape, who was abject (she could tell now) but still stoic, and she literally leaped over the table - managing to be graceful, not awkward - and approached the Hufflepuff table. The children had never seen her mad before, so they didn't stop their games.

Well, when she grabbed the ear of the ringleaders and dragged them out of the Great Hall, the rest stopped and stared after them in wonderment and fear.

"Erm, Professor Granger," chirped Roveric, "we didn't intend for it to get this out of hand, you see-"

"Enough," Hermione said, her voice so cold it nearly chilled her teeth, "enough."

She dragged them out of sight of the Great Hall's open doors, and let them stand in the corner for a good long minute quivering before she spoke.

"Mildred," she said, "don't you have something about your body you're ashamed of?"

The girl squirmed. "Erm."

"Spit it out."

She looked pale, and glanced at Roveric.

Hermione kept her face stern. "You felt like it was all right to embarrass an esteemed Professor - who is _also _one of the most important people who made the wizarding world safe for you to live today - in front of over a hundred students. I'm sure you can handle sharing in front of just one."

Roveric giggled nervously, and Hermione just shot him a look that said, 'You're next.'

Milly blinked, then said, "Erm. Well. I… my cunt don't look like they do in pictures."

This made Roveric - poor chap - turn dirigible red.

Hermione sighed. Yet another thing to talk about with McGonagall - sex education. "As long as there aren't six tentacles poking out of it, you are probably fine, my dear."

The girl still appeared concerned, and a little embarrassed, but Roveric looked like he was going to die of not breathing.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "But even if there was something wrong with it," she said, as the girl opened her mouth with an unmistakable 'erm-professor-could-you-take-a-look-at-this-please' in her eyes, "would you be happy to have it be the talk of the school over Saturday morning lunch, the day of a big game?"

The students both knew they'd been told, and hung their heads in lieu of an answer.

"Roveric," Hermione went on, "tell us something now."

The boy mumbled something, without looking up, and Hermione demanded, "speak up!"

"I got pimples," the boy said, "in my arsecrack."

Hermione had to summon willpower from one of the nearby suits of armor in order to suppress her laughter.

"And you wouldn't like that to be shared with other people, either, I take it?" she said firmly.

"No," he admitted.

"So," Hermione said, "how do you think someone like Professor Snape might feel about being teased for something that's not his fault?"

"How is it not his fault?" Roveric exclaimed. "He's a fucking lardarse."

"And how do you know it's not a spell cast by an enemy that made him a 'fucking lardarse,'" Hermione hissed. "How do you know it's not because he's sick? How do you know it's not because his body is just different?"

The children were clearly regretting their activities of the hour.

"I didn't mean to let it get this far," Milly said, becoming tearful. "It just happened. I just was trying things on for the game and my friends told me I looked like Professor Snape, and I thought it was funny so I took it downstairs."

"How embarrassing," Hermione said with a shake of her bushy head. "Especially to be made a fool of for losing points for your house on the day of a major game. Fifty points from Hufflepuff."

Both of them looked crestfallen, and began to realize the severity of the situation.

"Moreover," Hermione went on, "if this incident 'just happened' to you, I think it's safe to say that you have no right to be criticizing someone for something that might have 'just happened' to them," Hermione said without skipping a beat. "I think you'll reconsider this course of action if it 'just happens' in the future."

"Yes, Professor," Milly said, sniffling, and Roveric nodded in agreement, looking pained.

"I think," Hermione said, "that the best way you can apologize is to think of something truly, truly nice to do for the Professor. In fact, I will give back half the points to Hufflepuff if you come up with and act out a suitable idea. Am I understood?"

Their chime, in unison, of "yes Professor Granger," was music to her ears, and she went back to the Great Hall, where Snape appeared to have relaxed none of his muscles, and he was waiting for her, not having eaten a single bite of his food.

Neville came in just then, and Hermione waved, but she sat down next to Snape. She saw Neville's eyes flit from Hermione, to Snape, and back to Hermione again, then with a carefully-cultivated ambivalence, the younger professor chose a seat at the opposite end of the table, where he half-heartedly ate a bowl of porridge.

Hermione could only focus on one catastrophe for the moment, however, and she pushed Snape's plate towards him.

"Eat," she murmured, "it's fine now."

"You took points," he said, not nodding or gesturing at the house points display. "Quite a few, it seems."

"I'll give the points back to them," Hermione said, "provided they do something for me."

"Ah," Snape said, apparently reassured, "so your bleeding heart has not escaped you after all."

"No indeed," Hermione said with a grin, "It's just gotten a bit more sly."

"I see," Snape said, sitting back in his chair and steepling his fingers thoughtfully.

His stomach gurgled pleasantly, and *how* arousing it was for her!

She responded by taking her fork and taking a bite of his spaghetti bolognese. "Hey," he exclaimed, but gently, watching her face as she spooned the red sauce into her mouth and chewed and swallowed.

"Always looks better on someone else's plate," Hermione said with a smile, and got up to get herself a plate of her own.

Upon her return, he'd cleared half of the contents of his own plate, and was dabbing his lips with a napkin in as dainty a manner as possible - as if he could hide the sheer pleasure he'd been having in filling his belly.

"Come now," Hermione said, and put a second plate next to his. "You'll be wanting a bit more, so I saved myself the trouble of getting up a second time."

"Or have you?" Snape asked with a smile, and Hermione was pleased to see that he seemed no longer to be paying attention to the children. A good thing, too, because Milly and Roveric were watching Snape eat with a mixture of concern, disgust, and fear.

Hermione herself gave them a stern warning look that made them retreat hastily into their own lunches, and though they periodically checked back to see if she was still looking, she didn't disappoint them.

At least her charmwork didn't disappoint them. For herself, Hermione was unable to tear her eyes from Snape and his nice fat belly, heavying man-breasts, and tickling of a triple-chin.

As he tore his way through a third - then fourth - platter of spaghetti, then finished with two generous slabs of chocolate cake, Hermione was almost unable to keep her hands away from her clit to more decent places. As it was, as she helped grab his napkin from the floor when he dropped it, she went nearly wild to feel his boner creeping underneath his trousers.

Soon they finished lunch and exited the Great Hall, Snape moving slowly with the preponderance of food that had made its temporary home in his stomach.

"How full are you?" she asked as they began to walk outside in the yard towards the apparition point.

"Just full enough that I won't be hungry until dinner," Snape said, "and just in case…" He waved his hand, and a basket emerged from where it was invisible, floating behind them.

"How sweet," Hermione said, in all sincerity, and showed him that she'd also brought provisions in her magic shrinking bag.

"We *will* be feasting up there, won't we?" he said with a lopsided smile that was entirely too adorable, and Hermione added, "and other things, I hope."

"Quite," he said, almost jovial, and soon they reached the apparition point.

"Take my hands," he said commandingly, and she obeyed without question. "Let me lead," he said, and she closed her eyes, allowing him to will them where he wanted to go.

With a few moments, they arrived on a beautiful hillcrest.

….

(sorry for lack of posting after a consistent two weeks or so - real life caught up to me! argh! it's got my legs, it's got my legs! help save me!)


	17. Chapter 17

They landed in the middle of a beautiful hill with patches of dying heather scattered all around. Hermione reflexively gathered her arms around her to insulate herself from the brisk, bog-scented breeze that came from over the moor, and Snape noticed before she did herself, and cast a warming spell over her. He himself was wearing a heavy coat that settled well over his large body. Not saying anything, he strode forward, putting on his long komodo-hide gloves, and started skinning the dried yarrow flowers from their stalks.

She hadn't known he was serious about this being an actual gathering trip, so for a moment she floundered - she had worn good walking shoes and a warm wool sweater, but she hadn't brought anything to take clippings or collect them.

Snape seemed to have anticipated this, however, and as she caught his eye, he nodded towards the basket that had followed them.

"I wasn't sure if you would remember to bring the necessary things," he said, grunting as he bent over, "so I took the liberty of bringing extras."

"Thanks," Hermione said, going to the basket and opening it.

She tried not to look too closely at the food that jammed the basket to its brim, so that it'd be a surprise when they got it out. She saw another pair of heavy gloves and retrieved them, as well as a pair of iron clippers, and several mesh bags of varying fineness.

She grabbed one of the more fine ones and put on the gloves, then joined Snape in his exercise.

He seemed to be enjoying his exertions, she noticed as she set herself up to work alongside him. His hands grasped the stems firmly, without breaking them, and if it was a single stem without any extensions, he'd cup his hand around the stem and slide it upwards with a swift and practiced motion that resulted in virtually no breakage, and almost no loss of the tiny frail drying flowers.

Hermione tried to emulate him, and initially lost a great deal, the flowers and their pollen floating in the afternoon air like powdered sugar.

"Faster," he said, "you have to be like a viper. And be on the watch for poison hemlock," he added, "it looks similar, and sometimes the most frail and delicate of flowers is the most deadly."

"You don't need to warn me about that," snapped Hermione, "I've taken first-year potions."

He didn't respond, instead just snapping a final cluster of flowers and moving to another part of the patch.

They worked in this way for a time, until Snape decided they'd filled enough bags with flowers, and he sealed them with an antileakage charm and got out trowels.

"Roots," he said by explanation, "It's a bit of work, but it's a galleon per pound."

"Oh," Hermione said, and realized that, of course, he wasn't just picking all this just for his own potions. As she looked at the bags they'd collected - about two dozen at this point - it was painfully obvious that it was more than a single potions-master, even one completing research, might need.

"What," he asked, studying her face as she obediently picked up a trowel and knelt on the ground, "are you disappointed that I should be so mercenary?"

Hermione began to excavate a root from a plant she had already picked flowers from. "If I were less of a pragmatist," she said slowly, "I'd say that it was inappropriate to pick things to sell on a date."

He looked stricken, and stopped scraping at the ground to look at her attentively. He seemed a little confused, but as she was getting to read him better, she could tell he was mostly scared.

"However," she said, continuing with the task of shoveling before her, "I am more of a pragmatist than most girls, so as long as I get a cut, it's fine with me."

"Oh, of course," he said, visibly relaxing. "Except that it's not for personal gain. This is purely to supplement my meager research fund."

"Really?" Hermione said, taken aback. "You mean to say that you're struggling for funding? After all you've done for this country?"

He shrugged, and went on digging. "McGonagall gives me an annual research stipend in lieu of a full salary. Since I'm not teaching, she doesn't feel like I deserve a substantial income separate from my research goals, especially since I am not paying for the research facilities-"

"-you mean the dungeons," Hermione interrupted with a grimace.

"I get a certain amount that I am permitted to use for personal matters, and a certain number of quid in a pension fund," he continued, and moaned in pleasure as he successfully unearthed a large nebulous root network. "And I in fact earn more than I did as a teacher and as head of house. But there is the expectation that since my cost of living is so low, the money I receive is supposed to cover all of the work that I do. I can't get another penny out of her. Which is ridiculous," he went on, bagging the root system and inching carefully towards the next bulging recipient of his attention, "given that the cost of my materials for a semester can potentially be more than my earnings."

"I can't believe it," Hermione said with a frown. "How do you make up the difference?"

He shrugged. "Grants, mostly. But the problem with those is that I have to squeeze my goals into their parameters. Sometimes this means I massage the goals of my research - which is not ethical of course, particularly since I am expected to get certain results - but more often I massage my project's boundaries. My research, indeed, is just as bloated and overextended as other things about me," he said, sending her a firey glance that betrayed how shallowly beneath the surface his lust lurked.

Hermione took this as a cue, and carefully removed her gloves by turning them inside-out, attentively not getting the outside surface of the gloves on her hands. As Snape turned back to digging - well, more like stabbing at the soft dirt around the base of the root with his trowel - Hermione moved behind him and gently snaked her hands underneath his coat and settled them on either side of his paunch, which seemed to struggle to be comfortable as Snape knelt in the dirt.

"I like these other things about you," Hermione said with a shiver, pressing her lips against his neck, letting her hands snuggle in the folds of his lovehandles, her fingers draping over the curve of his belly and patting it gently, stroking it.

"Also," she went on, as Snape leaned back, uncurled his legs, and sat back on his arse, heaving deeper and deeper breaths as he gave up on this particular root for the moment. "I'm impressed by your taste. I never really noticed how much care you put in dressing. When I was a student, it was all black, black, black to me. But now I notice that you seem to choose the softest, most lovely fabrics. It's nice."

"Blame Lucius Malfoy for that," Snape said with a groan, "there was a day in fifth year where I was... embarrassed by my clothing, and Malfoy decided that it reflected badly on the whole house for me to be dressed so poorly, so he made a point of taking me shopping, in exchange for writing some essays for him or some nonsense." He sighed. "He was so in the closet, it was ridiculous. I'm certain he enjoyed that shopping trip much more than I did, even child of poverty that I was."

"So ever since, you were addicted," Hermione said, letting her hands relish the feel of his silk shirt and the soft, tender, juicy man inside it.

"No, not addicted," Snape corrected, as he took off his gloves from the inside-out as well, "it... mostly was for self-protection."

He leaned back into her slightly, and grasped her hands, guiding them closer to the front of his belly, and gently rubbing them against him.

"Once I realized that people based their impressions of you so heavily on your clothes," he went on, "I saw a reason and a way to take charge of how people saw me. And once I realized that Malfoy was an easy mark when it came to dressing up young men," he said with a smirk, "I... well, I won't say exploited that, but I took advantage of it as needed until I couldn't any more. And at this point," he said, unwinding her from his body and turning around to face her, "I am able to take care of myself, as it were."

"No more dressing up for Lucius Malfoy," Hermione said, pressing more kisses into his neck, and his breathing began to get more shallow. "Did you ever do anything else for Lucius Malfoy?"

"Oh, just the typical tit-for-tat," Snape said, clearly not interested in going into more detail, but he added, dismissively, "I sucked his dick in broom closets, let him fuck me in the ass whenever he liked, that sort of thing."

She looked at him, somewhat horrified at his blase attitude.

"It's not as if that wasn't the norm back then," he said, with a detached coolness that frightened her. He nestled his face into her neck as she held him, and he had one hand on his belly, one hand on her thigh. It was an awkward but strangely adorable position. "The purebloods of their parents' generation were *so* fucked up. There was an explicit belief that purity reigned above all, and that fucking boys didn't count as impure because of bullshit reasons, and they remained virgins if they avoided contact with women until marriage. As most of them insisted, Malfoy talked big about his love of the fairer sex, but unlike most of them, I could tell he actually *enjoyed* seeing me naked."

Hermione let her hands drift down, and she pulled him close into a hug, not sure how she felt about all this self-disclosure.

"Are you all right?" he asked, pulling away just enough to look at her face.

"Fine," she said, her tongue feeling heavy. "It's just hard envisioning you as a bottom."

"I didn't think of it that way," he said, putting his face back where it had been, which was nice because his plump face against her clavicle was warm and comforting. "I didn't feel taken advantage of. I only bottomed for Malfoy, and I definitely felt like I was getting the better half of the deal."

"All for a bunch of clothes," Hermione said with a frown. She didn't like to judge, but in this particular case, she felt justified.

"Well," Snape said, "there was that, but there was also protection. No one in Slytherin bothered me anymore about my blood status, which was nice."

This changed how Hermione felt about the situation immediately. "Oh. I see."

"Yeah," he went on, almost wistfully, then said, "but enough about that. We've still got much of our task ahead of us."

He eased himself out of her hold and went back on his knees to continue digging, casting a glance back at her as he did so, as if unsure what she was thinking of him - and as if he was concerned about it.

She stood and tapped the trowel, transfiguring it into a spade, and she leaned into it.

"Be careful," he warned as the metal sank into the earth, "you don't want to destroy the roots. They're very thin and small."

"I'll just loosen up the soil around the edges, and you get it out with the trowel when you're ready," Hermione said.

She pressed it into the earth and felt it sink into the soil, and it stopped when it hit a root, and she carefully wiggled it until she was digging around the root. Once she'd found the bottom of the root base, she used the spade as a lever to raise the plant out of the ground.

Snape watched with concern and interest, and ultimately begrudging approval.

"That fine?" she asked, and he nodded.

"Just don't cut up the roots too badly," he said, and moved to unearth the rest of the one she'd been working on gently. His work was painstaking, like an archaeologist brushing away soil from a priceless painting.

She watched him with fascination at the way he leaned forward, his belly sagging against his plump thighs, his man-breasts hanging heavily, his bottom lip tucked under as he focused on the careful procedure. She realized she'd never seen him truly at work, ever, after years of knowing each other, and it was refreshing to see him in a position where he was in his element so absolutely.

It occurred to her that she'd also never really seen him *happy* before, and that saddened her.

"Kiss me," she said as he paused to wipe the sweat from his brow with the back of his glove.

"With pleasure," he growled, and their lips met.

(THE REST IS ON ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN!)


	18. Chapter 18

The sun came out for the third or fourth time that afternoon, casting the moor in a golden light, making Snape's perfect - *perfect* - dark hair glisten.

She grabbed the plate of cheese and bread and lay down next to him, and he readjusted himself so that they were both looking at one another, and he rested one hand on his belly and propped up his head with his other arm folded beneath his neck.

Without a word, she broke the rind off the hearty bread, smothered it in the cool, creamy butter from the basket, and offered it to his lips. They opened hungrily, and stole it from her fingers, licking the butter off her fingertips to follow.

"More," he implored, moving closer to her on the blanket, inching his body sideways like a large fat seal on the beach.

"You're so round," she said admiringly, and she folded the entire rest of the slice of buttered bread in her hand over twice, and then squished it together until it formed a ball, and then she dipped it in the butter again and put it in his hungry mouth. "It looks like we've got a lot in this wonderful basket of yours, so I hope you also brought your appetite."

"When do I ever forget it?" he said with a low, delicious growl, and suddenly his lips were sucking the place where her second chin was forming so subtly.

"I… I like that," she whimpered, "but here."

She pushed another ball of smooshed bread into his mouth, and he chewed thoughtfully, sighing and moaning as he tasted the creamy butter in the center, and he lay back again.

"Don't you dare stop," he said, laying on his back, folding his arms behind his head.

"You're just the biggest fucking fat cat in the universe," she observed lowly, pushing another ball of bread into his mouth. He chewed happily on it, and as soon as he swallowed she put another one into his mouth. She found herself making balls of bread with one hand while stuffing them in his face with the other, and oh, she could practically see his belly expandiing.

The whole loaf of bread was running low soon, however, and Snape's eyes were attentive and alert to this fact. Hermione pretended she didn't notice, never stopping her feeding of him, and just when she stuffed the last ball of bread in his mouth, he began to say something, but she shut him up with a kiss and grabbed her next choice of food from the basket - a large jar of creamy white mozzerella balls with basil and tomato.

And with a deft twist, the jar lid was off, and she let her fingers sneak into the sixteen-ounce jar and grab a fistful of the cool, sweet-smelling cheese, and she popped one into his mouth without breaking her pace.

"Mmmm," he whimpered as she successfully stuffed a ball of cheese into his mouth the very moment he swallowed the last of the bread, "you do know how to please a man."

He was so cute, chewing the cheese in the back of his mouth so he could speak (if garbledly), and his entire cheek puffed out, full and stuffed.

"I try," Hermione said, then stuffed another two balls in his mouth as soon as he could swallow the last one, and to her delight he stuffed those in either cheek and chewed them both at once.

"I like you with your mouth full," she purred, kissing him on either cheek, and rubbing the great expanse of his belly. It wobbled, flabby and growing, and it aroused her beyond words.

He swallowed again and opened his mouth wide, and she repated the process, and he chewed both balls salaciously.

She realized it took him quite a bit longer to chew two at once, however, so she settled back to stuffing him bite by bite once he swallowed those.

Soon the cheeses were gone, and Hermione was looking in her own expandable bag for vittles.

"Just want to get rid of all the perishables," she said with a smile as Snape looked at her expectantly, hunger in his eyes despite having eaten so much already. What she brought out of it made him shiver with anticipation visibly, his entire jellylike abdomen jiggling as she showed him what she'd brought.

"I'm going to be so fat," he groaned, opening his mouth, "So very, very fat."

"And you're going to like it," cooed Hermione. She'd stolen an entire cake from the Great Hall, and it was one of the most desireable ones, by her estimation. Sweet molten white chocolate frosting topped the thick, fatty, breadlike pound cake, and it was truly enormous, nearly as big as Snape's gut. It was big enough to feed an entire house.

"How on earth are you going to get that thing into me?" he mumbled, as she got a fork from the basket.

"Bit by bit, my darling," she whispered, "how else can you eat an elephant?"

He looked at her quizzically, and she replied, "oh, a Muggle saying."

"Someday," he said with a seductive grin, "I'd like to eat an entire elephant. A nice fat one."

"You can only prepare for that beautiful day by eating every single bite of this cake," Hermione said, her tongue passing over her lips. She licked some of the scrumptious buttercream icing. "Except for that bit, I guess."

He grabbed his belly from underneath, squeezing his fat through his dark button-down shirt, and he opened his mouth with a moan of hunger.

She didn't need him to ask, and she stuffed an enormous chunk of the cake into his face. The landing wasn't clean, since she'd overestimated the size of his mouth, and his face was covered with buttercream, but he sucked it down obediently, swallowing and chewing bit by bit until his mouth was empty again, and he licked his lips.

"More," he demanded, and she obeyed, despite the fact that she really wanted to lick the extra buttercream off of his adorable chubby face. He looked like such a glutton, she loved it.

But she herself was getting hungry, and so she tore off part of the cake for him and stuffed it in his mouth, but she also stuffed another part in her mouth.

He immediately sucked down what she'd put in his mouth, and he murmured "Oh god," his eyes transfixed on her. "Again."

She responded positively, and took another nice big handful of cake and shoved it down her gullet, same with Snape, and he was rubbing his belly more and more determinedly.

"Starting to feel it," he said with a low rumble, rolling back and forth in an effort to get more comfortable, "but don't stop. Let's see how much I can take. Fill me to capacity."

So she proceeded with this goal in mind. She put slice after slice of cake in his mouth, and he swallowed and burped and stuck out his tongue, and huffed and took deep, painful breaths, and then opened his mouth for more.

Oh yes, his face was starting to get red, and he was starting to sweat with the effort of chewing and swallowing, and Hermione kept pushing, and pushing, and pushing him to accept bite after bite.

But eventually he wasn't able to any more, and shook his head, lips closed, and he looked about ready to be sick.

"You look about done," Hermione said, and began to gently rub his overstuffed tummy.

He groaned with pleasure and pain, but kept his lips tightly pressed together.

"You need to rest for a bit," Hermione said, stroking him fondly. "You just rest. You definitely outdid yourself this afternoon."

He nodded ever so slightly, and his entire stomach rose and fell as he burped a little, making a little bit of room.

"Good digestion you've got," she said with a smile, stroking the lower, intestinal part of his belly. "I wonder if there are potions that might help to speed it up?"

He didn't respond, but rolled his eyes.

"Oh," she murmured, "I guess that was a dumb question. Of course there are potions."

He swallowed and rasped, a snail-like smile spreading across his face, "Don't you think I'm doing enough damage on my own without potions?"

"Oh, erm," Hermione said, chewing her lip, "if you don't want to try them, then by all means, forget I said anything."

He just gazed at her with blissfully sated eyes, and ever so gently rubbed his belly, careful not to slosh it.

"Maybe," he said, lowly, "I'd like to try sometime."

Hermione gently laid down next to him, both hands gently massaging his gut, and he moaned and shivered with pleasure. Her hands, as they traveled, ran over the line where his trousers cut across his belly, and with a gentle hand, she tucked her hand up his shirt and pulled them down, and undid the belt and buttons. While they'd been perfectly-fitting at the beginning of this afternoon, by now they were just hanging together for dear life.

"Oh god," Snape moaned with pleasure, "oh god."

Hermione's hands wandered a little bit lower... ... (AND THE MIDDLE OF THIS CHAPTER IS ON A03 as usual!)

...

Oh! Once they were done! Hermione felt so satiated, bloated, and a little sick. Snape seemed to be better, and was already licking the spoon once Hermione couldn't anymore, and he was rubbing her tummy in the most gentle and loving of ways.

"What time is it?" she mumbled through the stupor of pleasant overwhelming sweetness.

He grabbed his wand from the coat's sleeve-pocket and waved it once.

"Nearly time for dinner," he said, "we'd better leave, lest we miss it."

He was clearly dismayed by this prospect.

"Unless," Hermione said, sitting up as much as she could given her overstuffed belly, "let's go back to my rooms, or your rooms, or whatever, and sleep this off, then get up and have an excellent feast at midnight?"

He smiled, sitting back on his nice fat arse. "Let's do this."

Hermione was glad that they were magic, because quite simply, if she were a Muggle, she wouldn't have been able to gather all of their things and get off the hill without taking a nap.

Snape, fortunately, was a little more alert than she was, and he guided her in getting dressed again and grabbed her arm to apparate.

"Let's go," he whispered, embracing her, and he kissed her tenderly on the lips as they whisked away from the hill.

…

They arrived back at Hogwarts without any notable events taking place. No one intercepted the groggy, euphoric couple as they walked through the yard. The sun was setting, and the chill was starting to pick up, so they moved as quickly as they could manage.

However, as they walked past the Great Hall, Roveric - the younger student Hermione had punished before - saw them walking, arm in arm. His eyes grew wide, particularly as he saw their hands twined together, and he ran off.

"Ugh," Hermione said, "that one's a troublemaker."

"Never mind him," Snape said loudly, his voice nearly delirious, "I'm walking with the most beautiful witch in the castle."

"Shh," she said, but the damage was done. As it happened, Irma Pince showed up, looking even more anemic and thin than Hermione had ever seen her.

"What are *you* doing?" she said crisply to the two of them.

"What do you think?" scowled Snape, grasping Hermione possessively, "We're going to bed each other."

"Heavens!" the old witch said with an icy voice, "the scribblers get their just deserts at last. You two deserve each other," she snapped, "both of you, who could never respect a *single* library book by letting it speak for itself! Scribbles - SCRIBBLES in the margins," she said, hissing. "How will you like it when life *scribbles* all over you, eh?" she said, and stalked away moodily.

Hermione and Snape, so out of it as it was, looked at each other and burst into laughter.

"Okay," Hermione said, nearly choking on her own saliva, "I'm so glad to know I'm not the only one she hates."

"Somehow," he said in response, "I had no idea there was a staffmember who hated you, aside from me."

"What?" Hermione said, becoming sober all of a sudden. "You hated me?"

"-not quite the right word," Snape said, taking a deep breath. "Found your prodigious skills overrated because you're a Gryffindor, yes. I got very vociferous in staff meetings telling heads of houses precisely which students of theirs were just as good as you, though granted I was guilty of just a little bit of exaggeration. I had a reputation for dismissing you, actually," he said, and he seemed taken aback by what he was saying. "Oh. Erm. Well."

She turned to him with ice in her eyes. "You actively made my life harder?" she said.

"It wasn't personal," he said with a shrug. "I appreciated you, but I wasn't intimidated by you like most of the other professors on staff. And instead of giving you the credit you were due, I thought it was a good idea to highlight the skills of others who were being overlooked because you outshone them so greatly."

Hermione shook her head. "Let's talk about this some other time," she said, "I'm too loopy to think about it."

"That's fine," he said, and added, as they continued walking to the staff wing, "I don't expect you to understand me or forgive me. I've been an absolute arse to you most of your life."

"Well," Hermione said, reflecting for several moments, "I guess I expect you to make it up to me as best you can, now."

They arrived at her bedroom, and Hermione unlocked the door and let them both in.

Neither delayed in taking off their clothes and curling up in bed. Hermione only paused to throw some sparks in the fire with her wand, and they both lay down together with the roar of the warm fire to light their path to the bed.

Snape lay down and wrapped his arms protectively around Hermione, and laid his face in the nape of her neck.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm such a damnable fool."

She grabbed his hands and put them on top of her growing belly, not saying anything.

They lay this way for several moments, and then Hermione noticed Snape was shaking - not pleasurably, but uncontrolledly, with great heaving painful breaths.

Then she noticed her skin feeling hot drops of wetness at the back of her neck, then slowly rolling down her back.

Snape was crying. Flat-out crying. Silently, holding in his sobs, crying.

She turned around immediately, and wrapped her arms around him, and rocked slightly.

"It's okay," she whispered, "let it out."

He shook his head with a shivering gesture, and Hermione grabbed her wand and cast a brief muffilato spell so that in case any of the neighbors were around, they wouldn't hear.

"It's all right," she whispered again, "Everything's all right. Don't be afraid to cry. It's okay."

And then, only then, did he allow himself to sob openly.

He took great shuddering breaths, burying his face in her soft shoulder, and the emotional pain was tangible.

Hermione just stroked his hair, full of sadness herself, but also puzzled. What had brought on this? Was he just overwhelmed, or was there something more going on?

Once he'd gotten out much of the physical elements of his crying, she kissed his forehead and whispered, "Severus? What's going on in your head?"

This brought on another round of sobs, and he wrapped himself more tightly around her.

"Come on," she whispered, grasping him tightly in return, "talk to me."

"I…" he tried to say, but stumbled over his words. "I… I just have an unconscious drive to self-destruct whenever I'm happy for a moment," he finally managed to breathe out. "Nothing good can stay. If it's staying longer than expected, I try and destroy it. If someone good is in my life, I try and distance myself. Because I don't deserve good things," he said with a sob, his face pinned against her with the salt of his tears, which still flowed down. "I can't fucking let myself be happy."

"It's okay," Hermione said, kissing him tenderly again, "don't pressure yourself into feeling happy if you're not happy. And if you're happy but struggling to remain so, it's all right. You're all right. You haven't destroyed anything."

"But… I have," he whimpered, and he kept on crying.

"What have you destroyed?" Hermione asked gently, but he couldn't respond. He just couldn't stop crying, his body was convulsing with sobs and there seemed to be no end to them.

"It's okay," she whispered over and over again, and finally, peacefully, his crying slowed to a low, murmuring, whimper, with the occasional staccato of a sob.

"Shhh," she whispered, "it's all right."

She realized the conversation was over when he finally seemed to have fallen asleep.

It was mysterious, she thought, as she looked at the beautiful large man with his arms around her, but one that she could explore in the morning.

She closed her own eyes and, rocking him gently still, let herself fall asleep.


	19. Chapter 19

She awoke, and found that the space next to her in bed was unoccupied.

Honestly, she wasn't that surprised. As she'd drifted off to sleep the night before, she had felt that Snape might not be able to handle the embarrassment of revealing his emotions to her. Now she had to think about how to get him back - assuming she wanted him back. Part of her wondered if all of this was really worth it.

She got up, draped herself in the dressing gown that he'd given her - it was quite roomy on her, and she wondered what it looked like on his large frame - and went into the main room, clucking her tongue for Crookshanks. She was amused to think that her poor kneazle was probably startled by the goings-on of the night before.

She wasn't expecting Snape to be in her sitting room, darkly staring into his coffee as though bracing himself against a formidable foe.

"Hey," she said, and approached him, extending her hand.

His eyes didn't move, but he did extend his hand, and she took it, and clasped it warmly.

"How are you this morning?"

"Better," he begrudgingly mumbled, and he let go of her hand and sipped his coffee. He appeared skeptical of it.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked, desperate for him to give some kind of explanation.

He snorted, her own feelings far too apparent on her face. "Well, *you* clearly want to."

"If you want to," she replied, and turned to grab some coffee from the pot that he seemed to have brewed on her stove. "Sorry," she said, grabbing a mug from the counter, "my blend might not be to your taste."

"It's acceptable," he said, his tone barely civil, just a hair away from a snarl.

She poured herself a mug, found Crookshanks glaring at them both from the safety of the top of the bookcase, poured Crookshanks' breakfast into a bowl on the floor, and went to join Snape in sitting in front of the fire.

"Hungry?" she asked, and he nodded, reluctantly.

"Not really," he said, "but I should have something."

"That's right," she said, and gently squeezed his hand. "Do you want to call Lowly, or just want some biscuits?"

"Biscuits, for the moment," he responded, and Hermione got up again and went to the cabinet, where she got out her package of biscuits, and brought them back.

"Thanks," he said, as she pressed one into his hand, and he begrudgingly nibbled it, clearly without an appetite.

"So what was all that about?" Hermione said, not willing to wait longer than she had to to get information.

He groaned. "What do you *think*?"

She didn't know what to think, so she remained quiet until, with a roll of his eyes, he said, "Lily. Always fucking intruding on everything. I thought it was over," he said, taking a deep breath, "because I haven't felt this kind of grief for years now."

He took a deep breath and leaned back against the backrest, and laid his head on the back of the chair, clearly in pain.

"I thought this grief was gone forever. That I was Over It. But I think being here... being here has shown me that these... feelings... were just dormant, waiting for me to come back here. Or start having a serious relationship with someone. Or both at the same time."

Hermione nodded. "I don't understand, but I'm listening," she said.

"Look." He sat up and looked at her, a kind of fierce anger in his face that wasn't often there anymore. "When you're as fucked up as I am, even the slightest thing can twist my mood from *nearly content* to overwhelming despair. I was more disturbed than I let on by seeing those deer on the moors, though I tried my best not to let them bother me."

Hermione nodded, just listening.

"Then," he said, his knuckles white on the handle of his mug, "when we were returning, and I started telling you how I was so privately cruel towards you, I realized I was actively hurting you, even though I didn't mean to. And that lack of being able to control myself, and use my better judgment… that just brought me back to how I alienated *her,*" he said, his voice lowering, "and I don't know that I can prevent that from happening with you."

"You can," Hermione said, "don't let this kind of thinking write the narrative of your life."

"What kind of advice is that?" he demanded, his face stern, but there was that hidden undertone of vulnerability and fear.

He retracted this quickly. "I'm sorry, I know you're only trying to help."

"I'm not doing a very good job," Hermione said, and patted him on the shoulder softly. "So, erm, Severus?" (She didn't feel entirely comfortable using his first name, even at this point. She made eye contact with him and he didn't snap at her, so she took that as permission.) "I… I have to admire how well you're able to describe all this and tell me what's going on. It seems like you're really self-aware about these issues. I'm really impressed."

He nodded, somber.

"I've done a bit of work on myself," he said. "It just hasn't been enough."

"What do you mean?" Hermione asked, since this was a somewhat curious thing to say. "Work on yourself?"

He sighed. "I have a disease, Hermione."

She raised her eyebrows, not sure if he was being metaphorical or not.

"If you're going to tell me you're a vampire," she said, when he didn't say anything, "I'm sorry, but I'm not going to believe you."

He chuckled despite his gloom.

"No," he said, "I almost wish that were the case. Then I'd have a chance in a fight with the likes of Remus Lupin."

Hermione looked offended, and he apologized quickly. "Sorry, I knew better than to say that."

"Apology accepted," Hermione said, gravely.

Snape shook his head. "I know that you've always been an advocate for integrating Muggle medical concepts into our non-Muggle potions and such," he said, "so I'm surprised you haven't spouted out diagnoses for me already. There was that compelling second-year paper of yours that, while too ambitious, neatly laid out a variety of psychiatric disorders that correlated with symptoms of a selection of cursed potions."

"Oh," Hermione said, and looked at Snape hesitantly. "Honestly, I haven't thought much about that particular theory at all since."

"Well, I have," Snape said, "and I think made a damned bit of good sense. Once I left Hogwarts," he said, "initially I just floundered about, until I got myself the academic position at Oxford I've spoken extensively about. I went to a conference in London, and was invited to the United States for a year-long residency."

He smiled vaguely. "I met Erika there, and we hit it off. But she saw how emotionally unbalanced I was," he went on, "and she insisted I get support for it. Particularly since she specializes in psychopharmacology." He shook his head. "Even as badly knocked about as my head was, I was so thoroughly twisted around her finger, I did the unthinkable - I went to a psychiatrist."

He paused and took a deep breath, and Hermione gazed at him with fascination.

"You did," she said, when it seemed like he was waiting for a response. "How did that go?"

"Well," he said, and began laughing nervously. "I got a diagnosis of bipolar I disorder, is how that went. And the doctor gave me medication. And I didn't plan on taking it."

He shook his head. "Then I went back to Erika and complained that the doctor had told me to take medication, which was clearly not the brightest thing to tell someone whose specialty is psychiatric drugs. She listened to me bluster and fester about how I should be able to control my mind by sheer willpower, and how it was an insult to my skills at Occulmency."

"Wait," Hermione interposed, "You told her about being a wizard?"

"Oh," he said, "Yes."

She looked to him for more answers, and he shrugged. "I don't want to talk about how and why. It was a decision that was poorly logical, but all's well that ends well."

He shook his head to clear the air, and went on, "So she let me ramble about how I was above taking medication, and very simply she asked the question: if I was so successful without medication, would I call my current state of distress 'success?' And of course her point was clear. I was ragged and raw, and yet I refused medication that evidence demonstrated might help. So, she said, why not try it, in view of it being an experiment? Worst thing that could happen is that it wouldn't work."

He paused, putting one hand on top of his belly, and his stomach growled. He took another biscuit and ate the whole thing in a few bites. "And even though I was insulted, I took it."

He sighed.

"I hated the side effects, and told them I wouldn't take it, so they asked me to try another medication, and then another. And then, when neither of those did anything, they put me on lithium."

He paused. "And my brain's overdrive was finally able to quit. It was almost miraculous. I felt emotionally stable in a way that I'd only ever been able to manage with the heaviest Occulmency, which of course is not sustainable long-term. But somehow," he said with a clear appearance of joy, "it made a difference that enabled me to feel like I was in control of myself. I could stop my brain from chewing on itself."

"But," he went on, "there was a major consequence I hadn't expected: I got fat."

Ah, it began to fit all together in Hermione's mind.

"I was initially deeply embarrassed," he said, morose. "I even stopped taking medication a few times. But my brain needed it too badly, and ultimately I was better off with the medication. Still is," he said, with a note of apology. "Though I'm on less than I was back then. In any case," he went on, "I had a growth spurt, and I stopped taking my shirt off for any reason. And Erika was sad about it," he mused, "but I… I could imagine her eyes trailing over my body. She and Jean-Raoul are just so disgustingly *fit,* going hiking and jogging everywhere, and I just felt myself becoming a giant ball of blubber.

"I don't think I could have lasted much longer in those conditions, so It was fortunate for us," he went on, "that I ended up getting a new position in London the following school year, and I went back there, and I felt far more comfortable engaging with her virtually - over the phone and computer. She couldn't grab my shirt and force me to take it off - which she never did, but I could tell she *wanted* to do - and I had some time alone to get used to my being fat."

"So how did you come to terms with it?" Hermione asked, moving her chair closer to him so she could touch his belly.

"I still haven't completely," he admitted. "I sometimes see myself in the mirror and think it's someone else. It's… it's unnerving, really. I took such a fierce pride in my leanness for so long. I scorned those who were even slightly pudgy because I felt like they were too soft. And now here I am."

He closed his eyes, and his stomach rumbled again.

"There's not many more biscuits," Hermione said, and took one for her own stomach, which was beginning to gnaw on itself.

"Let's order, in a moment," he said, "a nice hearty breakfast. I'm feeling better now," he added, with a smile. "Quite a bit."

"I'm glad," Hermione said, "so you still haven't answered my question."

"Well," Snape said, taking the last two biscuits greedily, "Erika told me I should try and find someone to date. And after hearing me complain ad nauseum about my weight, she told me that *some women* found fat men attractive. And this… this completely threw me. I demanded proof, and she showed me links that some of her other kink companions participated in. And that opened an entirely new way of looking at it."

Hermione smiled, "erm, links?"

"Oh," he said, and rolled his eyes, but it was more good-natured than complainy. "The internet is composed of links. They take you hither and thither across the net."

"I see." Hermione clapped her hands - she was getting too hungry to wait any longer - and Lowly arrived.

"The regular for me, please," she said crisply, and Snape also gave his order, keeping his eyes trained on Hermione the whole time.

"That's a lot," she said once he'd finished ordering.

"Not all of it is for me," he said, grabbing her around her waist and lifting her onto his lap. "Soon, my sweet," he said, kissing the base of her chin and sucking at her neck, "you'll be too fat for me to lift like that."

"Soon, *you'll* be too fat to lift me like that!" Hermione replied with a giddy smile. "So ultimately, Erika both made you fat, and helped you find contentment in being fat."

"I wouldn't say that, exactly," he said, "I mean, I was content with being fat - for, indeed, I was enchanted by the pleasure of touching my newfound flesh, and feeling it, and being able to eat with total abandon - aside from the fact that I thought it meant my dating pool would exclude any human creature with senses."

"Well," Hermione said, "it's definitely more of a long-term attraction, for me. Though I've not been as aware of it as I am now until relatively recently."

She described how she noticed Ron's tum grow a little bit with each passing season, then grow flat again, and how sad she was once spring training started up again and that nice little bit of pudge would disappear.

"I didn't realize I also liked a podgier self until I realized I'd put on a stone since graduation, and was enjoying pleasuring myself more than I'd ever enjoyed it before," she said with a smile. "I recall always having enjoyed visualizing big fat bears going into hibernation, since I was a little tyke. But I didn't make a sexual connection until I realized that shaming myself in front of the mirror for my newfound pounds, that had come on me from years of office work, turned me on."

"I really like your body, by the way," he added, touching her belly gently. "It's luscious."

"Thanks," she replied, "I return the compliment."

His cheeks definitely turned red, and he took a deep breath and kissed her.

"I can't believe I've found this," he said wistfully once their lips parted. "And I don't want my mind and its games to crush it for us before it's begun. That's all I'm saying."

"I have patience," Hermione replied, and kissed him again hungrily.


	20. Chapter 20

Food arrived soon, and she began to stuff him with pastries, his usual favorites it seemed, and he sat with his mouth continuously open, chewing voraciously.

After a half-dozen crossiants to take the edge off, Snape settled into an enormous omlette of egg and vegetables, made with an entire dozen, laced with an almost-gruesome amount of hard cow's cheese, and a delicious amount of flabby soft white goat cheese.

"That looks utterly delicious," Hermione said, raising her fork over his plate.

He nodded assent, and she took a forkful. It was glorious, one of the finest, softest, chewiest omlettes she'd ever had, and the cheese oozed out of every bite so decadently.

"I see this going straight to your thighs," she said with a laugh, patting his belly approvingly. "This food is so fattening. My mother would have told me it was 'only for special occasions.'"

"Well," Snape said with a crooked half-smile, "I see the entire rest of my life as a special occasion. I almost didn't have one."

She didn't want to say anything, so she just kissed him on the cheek, affirming that, indeed, she was glad he had one too.

It was interesting, she thought as she tucked into her own delicious bacon, eggs, and fried potatos, how Snape seemed to wear his heart out on his sleeve sometimes, making his traumatic history into a joke for her to smile at. It was strange but oddly endearing, though it was overwhelmingly tragic when she thought about it. He was coping with it the best way he could, and hearing him poke jibes at his own expense was an unexpected side-effect of being part of his life. She wished he wouldn't, because it made her feel bad to hear him, but she didn't really know what the alternative was.

At least he didn't pretend that his experiences had been overwhelmingly positive, in order to fake his way through. Sometimes Hermione felt like she herself was guilty of that.

"All right," he said, shoving his plate away from him suddenly, only half the omlette successfully ensconsed in his belly, "I'm at the place where I'm actually getting full. And right now instead of stuffing myself silly, I think it's time to pay a little more attention to your body."

He suited the action to the word, and turned his chair to face her.

"What?" Hermione said, putting another mouthful of food in her mouth, "but I *like* watching you stuff yourself silly."

"I will, I promise," he said, "but later. Now," he went on, putting a hesitant hand on her stomach, "I want to see you grow."

Hermione shivered with pleasure. "I'm already pretty full," she confessed. "Do you want to try something to help with that?"

He paused a moment, calculating.

"I don't, by principle, like the idea of using magic in weight gain," he said, leaning back and resting a hand on his tummy. "However," he went on, "very occasional use, consensually, does not bother me the same way that some of the literature that exists on gaining does."

"What other literature?" Hermione asked, taking another stab at her food.

"Erm," he took a deep breath, "erotic literature?"

He didn't seem to want to admit that he'd read any. Hermione just laughed.

"Oh. Okay. I guess there's got to be writing on everything under the sun. I've written my own erotic literature a little bit, in my head, but I had no idea that other people actually wrote it down. I just know I'd be so ashamed if anyone found it, that's why I never have."

"I see," Snape said carefully. "Well, some of it is *very* arousing, don't misread me, but some of it is very *clearly* something that most people would prefer to remain in fantasy, not reality."

"Like what?" Hermione demanded. Now, granted, she could *imagine* what he was talking about, but she also *really* wanted to hear him articulate it in his dark, sensuous voice.

He paused, seemed uncomfortable for a moment, and then said, "The other day, when we were fucking, you talked about imagining being… being so fat you could not move from your bed… Some people actually aspire for this," he said with a flush of redness, "and others just write stories. In truth, I would probably not want such a reality."

He swallowed dryly. "I admit that I'm scared, however. And what scares me is: I don't know that I can entirely rule it out."

Hermione nodded. "So you don't know that this is something you don't want," she said, slowly.

"For me," he said, with a nod, "it's mostly about being able to eat, and eat, and eat, and never have to stop. And so in some ways, size does not matter - as long as I am able to eat until my belly is satisfied and overstuffed to the most pleasurable extent possible. However," he went on, "I cannot, in good conscience, accept a reality where I'm chained to a bed and force-fed a slush of weight gain powder and cream all day."

"That's not something I'd like for you, or any partner," Hermione said with a gentle kiss at the corner of his mouth. "Even if that's what they wanted - I mean, I might try it as a scene in the bedroom," she said, contemplating it, "but not for a permanent state of affairs."

"I… I'd also try it as a scene," he said with a whisper that revealed how nervous he was, but how titillating he found the idea. He sighed, drawing his hair back from where it crowded his face. "Well. I'm glad we're on the same page," he added, and smiled a little more fully. "So, Hermione," he said, his voice getting darker and more tempting, "I've got a couple of potions here, and I'd like to try them on you, if I may."

"Mmm," Hermione said, putting both hands on her belly, which bulged out in front of her after having eaten her whole plate - and then started tackling Snape's leftovers besides. "I'm incredibly stuffed," she confessed, "so unless you've got something that would help with that…"

"Yes," he said and drew from out of his robe-pocket a small zippered pencil pouch, which he opened and revealed a series of vials. He looked at each of the labels closely, and then chose one, and gave it to Hermione.

"Six drops in your water," he instructed her, "and drink it all. Now."

She obeyed. The bottle was not well-used, but it had been clearly tried before - it was not freshly sealed.

"Your creation?" she asked, and he nodded. "What does it do?" She added it to her water and swirled it around.

"Drink it," he said with a smile, "and you'll feel."

She obeyed, and at once she felt the tightness of her belly reduce as soon as the potiion landed in it. Her appetite perked up in a second wind, and she felt like her belly could swallow another couple of pints of food.

"So," she said, and paused, "let me guess, it's something that accelerates the enzymatic breakdown of the food in my belly?"

"No," Snape said with a smug smirk. "Opposite effect. It's not the amount in your stomach that gets smaller - for what then would the point of stuffing be? - but your stomach's natural rebuilding mechanisms are accelerated to stretch and make more room around the food. But beware," he added, and unbuttoned the bottom few buttons of his shirt, and showed her a series of oddly-congruent stretchmarks that seemed to be of the same age and lustre. Running his thumb over them, he said, "I got these from a single testing. It will be tempting to overstuff yourself beyond a place of comfortable fullness. Don't overdo it, or you will regret it."

"Oh phooey," Hermione said with a laugh, with one hand pulling the rest of Snape's meal in front of her, with her other raising Snape's shirt so she could admire his vast tummy better. "How on earth do you expect me to catch up to you in size without getting a few lines on my belly? In fact," she added, blushing slightly, "I'd consider them badges of honor. Scars of the battle."

In response, he lifted up her nightshirt - she hadn't gotten dressed - and touched her creamy white belly. "I'd just hate for this to get as scarred as mine," he said, and bent down awkwardly and kissed her smooth white skin. "I want you to get fat for me, but not at the expense of-"

"-Too fucking bad," Hermione cut him off with a snap. "I think the marks are sexy, frankly. And it's my body, so it's going to look as scarred as I please. You've already given me the reigns, dear Severus, don't you fucking try and take them from me now."

She tucked into the omelette with new relish, and within a very few minutes it was completely gone.

"Glad we over-ordered," she said with a smirk, as Snape watched with overwhelming fascination, and she stood and grabbed the tier of muffins and breakfast cakes. "I'm going to eat every single one of these."

She then proceeded to sit her nice, plump rear down in her chair, and she stacked her plate high with muffins and cakes. Snape mutely grabbed a bowl of Chantilly cream and brought it to her elbow.

"Thanks," she said kissing him on the cheek. "Now are you going to feed me, or not?"

He seemed to get over his reluctance, replying, "Fine," and he took a toasted muffin, coated it in a thick layer of butter, topped it with delicious rosehip jam, and Hermione's mouth grabbed it out of his hand as swift as a cat grabbing a mouse.

He gave her another muffin when she was done eating the first one, and then gave her a bit of a cake topped with an enormous dollop of Chantilly cream.

"That's exquisite," she whispered with a whimper, and then Hermione then hungrily tried to eat the entire bowl of cream.

Snape watched her, transfixed, as she took spoonful after spoonful.

Eventually it became too much for her, and she looked around for something to take the rich edge off the cream. Snape accommodated her and took some strawberries, which he then dipped into the cream and put into her waiting mouth.

She swallowed every bite with determination and grace. She had, after all, signed up to stuff herself a second time.

By the time she finally stopped, there was nothing left on the table that was edible - and her belly had tripled in size. It hung out in front of her, wobbling and sloshing, and angry red stretchmarks had made their home on her skin.

Snape did not seem as disgusted by them as he'd imagined, as he ran his hands over her belly gently, ever so gently.

"Did you outdo yourself completely," he asked, cautious, "or did you add more than six drops to your water?"

Hermione shrugged.

"Twelve drops," she said, cracking a smile.

He firmly frowned, but ran his fingers all up and down her stomach, sensuously taking in the size she'd swelled up to.

"You've always been ambitious," he said with begrudging admiration. "Now if I'm not mistaken, you'll be needing this."

He opened the pouch of vials again and withdrew another vial. "Take twenty four drops of this and put it on your tongue," he said, "and don't adjust the dosage."

Hermione was beginning to feel an enormous tummyache, the like of which she'd never felt before, and it was not at all pleasurable. She nodded and took the vial, and applied the drops to her tongue, and the pain reduced significantly, leaving her feeling only immensely - *immensely* - fat.

"Can you stand?" he asked, standing himself and offering his hand to her.

Hermione nodded, and with his help she stood, though she was tremendously off-balance.

"Sorry," he added, "your balance issue is a side effect. Can't be avoided, at least for the moment. But how is the pain?"

Hermione smiled bravely. "Ooof. I feel like I should only have taken six drops."

"I don't think that's necessarily true," he said, encouraging Hermione and her engorged belly to the bedroom. "The pain is not proportional to the amount you ate. I'm glad you stopped when you did, though," Snape went on, assisting her in sitting on the bed, "I know it is possible for the stomach to become overtaxed, and split open, so I beseech you to be gentle with yourself for the next several hours."

"Understood," Hermione said, smiling. "Does that mean you won't fuck me?"

She lay down on the bed and wiggled invitingly, both hands perched protectively on her belly.

Snape grabbed her hand and placed it on his trousers, where his cock lay, and she felt it straining against his pants, as hard as a rock.

"With great reluctance," he answered, and with that, he shoved the nightshirt up Hermione's belly, and, with practiced movements, he separated her legs and stuck his tongue up her cunt, laying on his belly on the bed.

She writhed and swore as he tasted her, she who was already so wet that her nightshirt was damp, and he kneaded and stroked her belly with one hand even as he licked and sucked at her clit and labias.

Finally she couldn't take anymore, and he stripped off his own clothes and, without preamble, stroked himself until he came in his hand.

Breathless, he lay back with her on the bed, and did not protest as she unbuttoned his shirt.

"Look," she said, sitting back and stroking her belly, "I've got marks now, too, and they match yours."

He nodded, and as his shirt separated and revealed his massive rolling tummy, he rubbed his own belly for a few moments, though eventually he couldn't resist touching her all over.

"You are so big," he said admiringly. "So very big."

After a few moments' quiet, he added, "So how far do you want to go?"

"How far what?" Hermione asked, with a laugh.

He appeared somber, but his cheeks were flushing red.

"I mean," he said with a smile, "what's your end goal? How fat do you want to get?"

Hermione felt her face turn red as well.

"I… erm… I don't know," she confessed. "How about we re-evaluate in a month or two, once it's no longer such a novelty to eat myself into oblivion with a sexy assistant like you?"

Snape nodded. "Understood," he said with a twisted smile. "I, for myself, also need some time to think about it."

They sat there listening to the silence of the room, breathing heavily together.

"By the way," Hermione asked, "how much do you weigh right now?"

Snape paused. "I believe I am in the vicinity of three hundred and some-odd pounds. If I were taller, it'd look like less, I suppose, but on my frame, I'm more likely to look plumper than not."

"We need to see for sure," Hermione said, and waved a spell at him. The charm made him glow blue for a moment, and then the number '324' hung in the air, followed by the image of a disapproving Vogue-esque witch with the caption, 'Getting far too ample in the region of your tum-tum,' and a list of recommendations for weight loss.

Snape was appalled by the charm, and his jaw dropped in disbelief.

"What?" Hermione asked, trying (but failing) to sit up to see his face better. "Was that not what you were expecting?"

He shook his head, "No," he said, peering at the woman's face. "No, that is *not* what I was expecting."

"I'm not surprised, though," Hermione said, moving and grabbing a handful of his delicious belly fat. "Three-hundred seemed a *trifle* low."

"No," he said staring at the witch in disbelief. "That's not what I'm talking about. What on earth is that charm?" He grimaced. "It's wretched."

"Oh," Hermione said, "It's something I thought all the girls used in the dormitories. One of the Patil twins taught it to me. Is there something wrong?"

He looked at her askance. "Erm. *Yes,*" he snapped. "Is… is that *really* what they use in the dormitories?"

"I suppose so," Hermione said, a bit taken aback. "Why?"

He shook his head. "I don't like this. Do it again," he said, and pointed at the bare coat rack across the room. "Try it on that."

Hermione did, not quite sure what Snape was getting at.

The surly witch glared a little bit less as it covered the coat rack. "Quite good, quite good, but don't forget to exercise," read the caption, and the witch looked a touch less dismayed.

"Gods," Snape said, and shook his head. "How demoralizing. Gods."

Hermione cast it on herself, and saw the familiar tut-tut face on the witch, accompanying the caption, "Better had leave off the sweets, dearie, they're starting to show around your middle."

"I was so excited the day my 'scope changed from 'Think about trimming down your portions for a more svelte figure' to this," Hermione said with a smile.

Snape just shook his head, his jowls swaying. "And this is what you girls think of to torture yourselves with after hours?" he said with disapproval on his face.

"Well," Hermione said, "I haven't thought of it that way, but yes."

He sat up laboriously on the edge of the bed "I'm banning this charm," he said, "at least from my house."

"My dear," Hermione said, "Reginald Floss is head of Slytherin, now."

Snape clearly had forgotten, and he sank back down onto the bed as he was reminded.

"Shit," he said, and, rolling his tongue thoughtfully, he added, "I wish I had power again."

Hermione turned herself over gently, slowly, so as not to pressure her belly. "Well, you can fix that here, if you want to," she said with a wry smirk.

He swatted her - playfully? yes, playfully. Severus Snape was being playful. *The wonders never cease,* Hermione thought as she smiled at him.

"You know what I mean," he rumbled, and he sat up again, eased himself out of bed, and went to the other room. He came back with a large package of crisps and a bowl of ice cream big enough to stuff him again.

"It's a bit early for ice cream, isn't it?" Hermione teased him with glee as he took spoon after spoon of it.

He shook his head. "And when do you think that will *ever* bother me?" he said fiercely, growling into it.

She laughed and watched him eat, though she extended her tongue for a bite or two herself.

"I love watching you," she whispered, "I know that it's all just going into that nice deep gut to make it spread out a little more, inch by inch. How much do you think you've got there?" she added as she burped a little, making more room to swallow another couple of bites.

"Something in the vicinity of three pints," he said, and shrugged. "I don't know. It's magic food, it doesn't come in boxes. Isn't it odd how Muggle food comes in boxes? I never realized how odd it was until I was an adult." He shook his head.

"Anyhow," he said, once he was slowing down, "I think I could get up to about five hundred pounds before I'd think about…slowing my intake."

Hermione nearly came right at the thought. "You, five hundred pounds," she said, and began to reach for her clit. It was a bit awkward to reach, with her belly in the way, but she managed it. "I can see it."

"Though I'm fairly sure," he went on, getting more comfortable on the bed and letting his gut wobble ominously in front of him, "I would not be happy if, at any weight, I was unable to get my cock inside your fat, fat cunt."

Hermione nodded passionately. She knew that would be a dealbreaker for her as well.

"So, until that point," Snape said, rubbing his belly to ease some of the stuffing pain, "I'd be content."

"Of course we're not talking about health at all, here," Hermione said, feeling sober for the first time in this conversation.

Snape looked at her dead on.

"Hermione," he said, "you should think about that for yourself, and yourself only."

He took another heaping spoonful of ice cream. "I want you to know this," he said, his voice very low and dangerous, "I'm done supervising my health. My life and health were both sworn to Dumbledore for so long, I'm pleased to finally have the freedom to trash my body if I want to. I don't have to think about anyone except my own sorry arse, and my own sorry arse gets turned on by eating until I'm fit to burst, so that's what my sorry arse will get."

He shook his head. "I don't have to worry about staying healthy to protect Lily's child. He's an adult. My role in his life is done. I don't have to worry about protecting the school, or anyone else. My role as a protector is over. I will not be Mad-Eye Moody," he went on, "screaming in kids' ears to get them to stop dawdling in the halls. I will not be waiting for the Dark Lord to come back. Because he won't."

He took a deep breath, and glanced at her. She was looking at him empathetically.

"Listen," he went on, "I don't ask for you to understand, I just ask for you to not bother me about it."

"All right," she said, but he went on, turning to her and looking deeply into her eyes.

"I'm going to get obscenely fat, and I'm probably die because of it. And I don't give a flying fuck." His face, growing white, revealed his emotions, even though he was continuing to stuff his face,

"I don't give a flying fuck about your feelings at all in this regard." He shook his head. "Am I eating myself to death? Maybe. But that's my choice to make."

He took a deep heaving breath, and finished off the ice cream. "So bring on diabetes, high blood pressure, cholesterol. If Slughorn could make it to whatever ridiculous age he's made it to, then that probably bodes well for me. I'm hoping my wizard blood is better than that of my father."

He sighed. "But even if it doesn't," he said, trembling with emotion, "well, that's on me. And I reserve the right to choose to live in such a way that I could potentially die of a heart attack at fifty."

Hermione had to think for a moment about all this. Didn't he value her, and living with her to a ripe old age?

Of course she realized she was jumping the gun a little, but still!

"Moreover," he added, reading her face, "I ask you not to take this personally."

"I'm trying not to," she said, nodding, but still struggling. "But, I mean… don't you want to live a life for yourself? You were telling me about your tendency to self-destruct… don't you think this might be part of that?"

"I'm sure it is," he said grimly, "self-sabotage or what-have-you. I'm not going to examine it too closely. But whatever. I'm done. I've made enough marks on the world. If I died tomorrow, I'd die happy."

He put down the bowl, and added, "I hope you can live with my ambiguous feelings about life. If not, I understand."

Hermione shook her head. "I mean," she added, "I hope that eventually you won't feel like you've spent all of your life that is worth spending, and that eventually you won't feel like caring for your health isn't an obligation you have to make to others, but a chore like brushing your teeth - just good hygiene to protect yourself."

She paused. "I'd like you to feel that you're worth it, and that your life is worth it."

"Well," he said, rolling his eyes, "I don't feel that way now."

"Yeah," she said, and she leaned towards him and kissed his cheek. "Maybe someday you will. And I hope I can see you live to the fullest, until then."

"Fine," he said, though his cheeks were red. "As long as you let me eat myself into an early grave if I so choose."

"Agreed," Hermione said, and she gingerly wrapped her leg around his. "I can scarcely contain my excitement for you to weigh over five hundred pounds," she said giddily, "You'd be a full meal for the Giant Squid instead of just a tasty snack."

"If that's the scale you're using," Snape responded teasingly, "you're scarcely a nibble at the moment."

"Mm," Hermione said, "I can't wait to be a full meal myself."

Snape looked at her hungrily. "How are you feeling at the moment? Still stuffed?"

Hermione poked and prodded her tummy. "There's a little room in there."

"Good," he said, and pulled his trousers and pants off. "Then let me finally get my cock inside you."

"Ooh," she whimpered, and they started having marvelous sex, which I'm going to save until next chapter.


	21. Chapter 21

...

(sexytimes begin on A03)

"That was amazing," she breathed as he gently let her down from the position.

He nodded, and wiped his face, then lay his body over hers, his cock nesting near the top of her arsecrack, his chubby breasts creating warm wet spots on her back, and his belly squeezing against her with the heaviness of a boulder but the softness of a blanket.

"You're so fucking beautiful," he whispered, and kissed her neck, and nestled his face in her hair.

"Thanks," she whispered, "but on my too-full tummy, I can't be in this position."

"Oh," he whispered back, and rolled off swiftly. "Sorry about that. I like laying on my full belly sometimes."

"I just don't have enough of a belly to do that very comfortably yet," she replied, and she turned over so that her distended stomach faced the ceiling again. "But gods. You fill me up so well."

"So well that you won't fuck a thin man again?" he replied with a smirk.

Hermione blushed deep red. "Well, don't hold me to my words, particularly with recent developments moving along, but I want you to know that, without a doubt, you're the most satisfying fuck I've ever had."

"So glad to hear it," he said, sounding somewhat amused, and he moved his entire body close to her and laid a hand on her belly. "It was a mistake to have that potion, you know," he said, rubbing along the stretch marks on her belly. "You will scarcely be able to keep up with your hunger now."

She laughed. "You seem to have been able to."

"Yes," he said, rubbing his own belly with his other hand, "but I'm a full-time researcher. I never have to perform for students - I can eat whenever I want, provided it's not interrupting some crucial part of the brewing process. And as you know," he said with a smirk, "a good part of brewing is waiting. I admit I rarely let a potion simmer without stuffing something in my fat face, these days."

Hermione nodded. "I'll take that under consideration," she said. "What do you recommend I do to help with the situation?"

"Keep a stock in your drawer," he said, "you'll feel famished, but at least you can withdraw to get something in your tum when you can't bear it anymore."

He added, "At least that's what I'd do. Slughorn, as you know, rarely deigned to be so professional. Particularly in my days as a student, he would sit there eating an entire bulk-sized bag of chocolate frogs during class, and then get up just as excited as the rest of class about lunchtime."

Hermione laughed. "Speaking of food, where did those crisps go? I thought you brought in a bag."

"So I did," he replied amicably. He sat up, and grabbed them from where they were on the nightstand. "I find them somewhat laborious to eat, and they're potatoes (which I despise), but I suppose you like them if you keep them in your kitchen."

"That I do," she said with a smile.

She opened them, and Snape passed a hand over the bag after she'd taken a handful - and suddenly they were gone.

"Where'd they go?" she asked, and she saw that he was laying a hand on his belly, rubbing it where it was slightly more distended.

"In my belly," he said with a smirk. "Simple thing to put them there. Basic transport spell. And moreover, the bigger your stomach, the easier it is to target it."

"Let me try," she said, and he raised a hand to stop her.

"Feel around for the boundaries of your organs, first," he said. "I'm well-practiced in it, but you don't want to accidentally put a bunch of crisps in your liver."

"All right," she conceded, and she let her fingers feel around her abdomen. She wasn't able to make much sense of it, but Snape grabbed her fingers and soon they were tracing the borders of her stomach, as well as she could feel it through the nice layer of fat that she'd been accumulating.

"Now," he said, "there it is. You want to try and feel it regularly, just in case it moves. Now, go ahead and try."

Hermione waved her wand over the chips, and suddenly felt the little bit of room in her tummy get immediately full.

"They just go in there whole," he said with a smirk, "so you want to wait a bit before your next attempt, so as to let them dissolve into mush."

"I prefer eating them directly, I think," she said with a grimace. "I don't like to have to wait."

He grinned. "Suit yourself, you fatty."

She grinned in response, and she stuffed her face with a full handful of crisps. "They're so good," she whimpered. "Feed me?"

"With pleasure," he responded. "I actually can't stand them, but I'll happily feed them to you."

"More for me," she murmured, leaning back.

(continued on A03)


	22. Chapter 22

After they grew tired of their sexual play, they fell into a dreamy napping state, where Hermione flitted in and out of sleep, and Snape lay there reading a book he had accio'ed from his chambers, one hand propping up his chin, the other resting against Hermione's tummy and holding his book. He was wearing thick-framed reading glasses, which made him look incredibly sharp, even nude as he was.

"I didn't know you wore glasses," she whispered groggily. "You should wear those more often."

He smiled disbelievingly and pecked her lingeringly on the lips. "What, is this something else you're secretly attracted to?"

"Not necessarily," she purred as his finger lingered under her chin. "Just looks good on you, that's all."

He grunted in reply, not otherwise responding, and turned from laying on his side to laying facing the ceiling, but scooted his voluptuous butt closer to her to make up the difference in distance.

It was a warm and comfortable place to be. Rain started to fall against the glass panes of the windows, accompanied by thunder and lightning.

Hermione shivered, as it got somewhat colder in the castle, and the castle was making its usual cracking noises as it adjusted to the change of air pressure that accompanied the storm. In response, Snape pulled the covers closer over her and moved closer to her, warming her with his nice fat body. The softness of his belly, heavy arms, and torso was inviting, and Hermione squeezed against him pleasurably.

She knew he would want to eventually leave, and though he was engrossed in his book, eventually Hermione's belly growled.

"You hungry?" he asked, and she nodded. "Gods." He sat up and drew the covers back from his legs, and as Hermione's stomach gurgled again, she saw his cock twitch despite itself.

He eased himself up and went into the other room, then came back with a loaf of bread, yogurt, hazelnut spread, and jam. He was grinning wolfishly, and his cock was nearly erect.

"Seeing you so full and fat turns me on so much," he said. He crawled onto the bed, and Hermione, with her legs under the covers, spread her legs so he could get as close to her as possible to feed her. He clambered close to her and let his enormous arse seat itself right there. "Open wide, my sweetheart," he said with delight, and spooned a nice heaping spoonful of yogurt and jam into her mouth. She swallowed and opened her mouth for more, to which he eagerly responded by giving her another spoonful, and another.

"Let me know when you're no longer hungry," he said with a glint in his eye, and Hermione knew he was challenging her.

She finished off the yogurt with no sign of stopping, and Snape grabbed the loaf of bread and slathered jam and nutella spread on it.

"Here you are, my sweet," he said, easing a slice into her waiting mouth. "That's a good girl."

She chewed and swallowed, then gestured for more.

Several slices slipped down her throat, and finally she was replete, and she sat back on the bed.

"So," she said, letting her tongue wander around her lips, tidying up, "I'm going to have to kick you out. I've got some work to do."

"Understood," he said, and he leaned in and kissed her fiercely. He withdrew from her at the precise second she was about to renege on her request and demand he stay and kiss her more. He could tell he had just perfectly underplayed his hand, and he gave her a solemn second kiss for good measure.

"I'll be busy for the next few hours, I think," he said, casting a wandless wave at his clothes, which of their own accord flew onto him. "But if you'd like company later this evening, I might be of a mood."

Hermione smiled and sat back, watching him dress. He still had that grace of a martial artist, even as fat as he'd gotten, and the way he moved his hands even in these simple acts of dressing just delighted her.

"Later," she murmured, as he went over to the window to look out of it.

"Later," he said, and opened the window.

"What are you doing?" she asked as he got on the stool next to the window. He shrugged, and stepped out the window into the wet day.

She gasped, and leaped out of bed, not knowing what to expect, but he suddenly reappeared, thoroughly soaked from head to toe, with a rose in his hand.

It was a very pretty rose, but it didn't quite make up for the moment of panic that preceded it.

"You rascal," she said, and swatted at him. "How'd you do that?"

He didn't say anything, and stepped back into the room. "Sometime I'll teach you," he said as his only response, drying himself off with a spell from his wand.

Then, as she looked at him aghast, he scooped her back into his arms and kissed her fiercely one last time, then strode out of the room, shaking his long wet hair.

Hermione ran to the window, looked down, and saw that there was no possible way he could have done that if he hadn't...

"You can *fly!*" she cried, and raced after him. "You know how to fly?"

"Maybe," he said, teasing, "well, it's more like controlled falling for me, these days. But," he went on, with a sniff of contempt, "you said yourself, you have work to do."

"Oh, fine," she said, with an immense pout. "I'll stay up late and time-turn until I get everything done."

"Why do that," he mused, "when you can just time-turn now, and get your work done in half the time with this incentive?"

"Fine!" she responded, throwing her hands in the air and rushing to her desk. "You could have chosen a better day for it, is all."

"I like this weather," he said, standing at the window. "It's dreary, but calming. So English."

He turned around and saw, to his evident surprise, that she was holding a stack of completely graded papers.

"I demand a lesson," she said with a fierce tone. "Now."

"That was quick, Granger," Snape said with a look of approval. "Now, come here."

She grabbed an umbrella from where it lay discarded under the coat-rack, and only once she was thus armed did she allow him to grab her in a tight embrace.

He picked her up slightly, testing her weight, and then he nodded with satisfaction.

"Hold onto me," he whispered into her ear, and he escorted them both onto the stool at the window, then he stepped onto the sill.

The gardens of Hogwarts lay below them. Hermione was glad she'd never had much in the way of vertigo, since this was incredibly high up off of the ground.

Her view was a truly spectacular one, especially when she was reminded of its beauty with the windows being open.

"Going now," he said with a rumbling voice, and he stepped off the ledge, holding her close against his soft belly.

The rain wasn't too heavy right then, just a fine mist of wetness, and they sank slowly, like a balloon losing air.

"This is beautiful," she said, "How did you learn to do this? This is... quite the Mary-Poppins feat."

"Never heard of her," he said with a shrug, "it's a trick that's not widely known, I'll grant you."

They landed on a stray rooftop to let their ears adjust to the change in air pressure.

"It's like swimming," Hermione observed, "except everything is water."

"I've heard it described that way before," Snape mused in response, though there was an edge of steel in his voice. Regrets were there, it sounded like.

Before she could ask what memories lay underneath that emotion, Snape's lips were on hers, and she was happy to feel them. The cold was numbing and was beginning to chill her fingers and nose, but Snape's warm folds had room for all of these pieces of her anatomy, somewhere. She let her fingers wend their way into his shirt, and they settled on his nice broad tummy, which seemed to radiate heat.

"Mmm," he said, shivering, but drawing her closer. "I like the fact that I can keep you warm."

Hermione kissed him in response, letting her nose warm itself in his soft neck fat.

As they stood there, admiring the view, she realized that she felt incredibly self-possessed in her relationship with him. There was nothing immature about their relationship. There were no guessing games. There were no petty squabbles. They had their imperfections, and they made them known to each other in good faith, sensitivity, and compassion. Well, mostly, at least.

"You know what," she said, holding him closer, "this is really good."

"Yes," he said, staring over her at the gloomy horizon, "I like to come up here sometimes. It's someplace that, despite the thousands of souls that Hogwarts has housed over the years, is relatively untouched by others. Very few people have shared this view with me."

Hermione nodded, taking in what he said.

"Who else?" she asked, since it seemed to be an invitation to ask.

He looked steadily elsewhere than her rosy face. "Dumbledore. Lucius. Lily."

Her hand wandered up and pointed his chin towards her, so she was looking into his eyes. "A short list," she said with a smile, and kissed him tenderly. "Thanks for showing me."

"It's less significant than you might think," he said with a slight scowl. "These are merely the few people I've spent an extended amount of time getting to know, with the exception of the Dark Lord."

"I see," Hermione said, and kissed him on the cheek anyway. She could read into it even if he disavowed the importance of the gesture. "So where'd you learn this trick, anyway? Some old book?"

He shook his head. "This isn't something you can learn from a book," he said, his breathing slowing. He eased himself down on the slick wood shingles of the roof and settled into a comfortable, relatively safe position. "It's a fundamentally practical skill."

Hermione was holding onto whatever she could for dear life, and was clearly not very comfortable, so he stood again, and grabbed her around the waist, and then they stepped off the rooftop, floating down to the ground.

They landed behind some ancient shrubbery, and Hermione saw that hiding behind it was a very old Muggle backyard playset. Some of the superficial accents were rusted, but the integrity of the structure was intact.

"What's this?" she asked, approaching it and touching it. "I think my parents got one of these for me when I was a little one."

Snape appeared a different kind of pleased than was usual for him. There was a kind of plain satisfaction, hidden behind a veil of stoicism.

"It's a bit older than that," he said, "I'm glad the anti-tarnishing spells have held up so long." He began to cast a few spells, and the swingset started to stand up a little straighter and cleaner.

He took a rueful look at the seat of the swing, but settled for leaning against one of the poles. "So, Hermione," he said, and gestured towards the swing.

Hermione laughed, looked at the tiny sliver of cracking plastic, and looked back at him.

"It'll hold you," he said, "but not me."

She nodded, and sat herself gingerly on the seat of the swing.

It was surprisingly resilient and strong, and her arse, while slightly too big for the child's toy, did manage to land in a comfortable way. Hermione then backed up and stood, contemplating letting go.

"Yes," he said, nodding, "do it."

"Is this supposed to teach me how to fly?" she asked, frowning.

He surprised her by nodding, a brooding entering his eyes.

She shrugged, and settled her arse more firmly into the seat, and lifted her legs.

It wasn't precisely like flying, but it was pretty close to it. And Hermione had just had a recent experience flying, so it wasn't just a paltry metaphor. There was the rushing of wind, the rush of lateral movement, and the feeling of near-weightlessness.

She relished it, and she began to swing higher.

"More," Snape said, though she could hardly hear him over the rush of wind in her ears. "Higher."

She nodded slightly, but felt her entire body wiggle. All of her motions were magnified. It took her a moment to rebalance.

"Now," he called, as she swung higher than before, "let go."

"Are you shitting me?" she called back, and refused to let go of the sturdy chains of the swing.

"Just do it," he replied as she approached the ground again, "Go."

She swung back and forth another time, but finally got the gumption to do it. "All right," she said with a whimper, even though he couldn't hear her, and she let go of the chains. She was propelled forward, and fell, fell, fell.

And she landed softly at Snape's feet.

She wondered initially if she'd been successful, since she hadn't broken her back, but he shook his head.

"Again," he said, and pointed to the swing.

"Seriously?" she said, "what am I supposed to do?"

"Just believe," he said simply.

"Believe what?" she demanded, cross. The rain was starting to come back, and she was feeling damp and icky.

"That you can," was all he said, and he stood back to watch her silently, his arms folded over his chest.

Of course this wasn't helpful, so Hermione frowned, but tried again anyway.

And again, she flew off, and again, and again. But she didn't manage to actually *fly.*

Snape shook his head disapprovingly. "This will not do," he said finally, casting a wordless drying spell on her, and he looked at her with some amount of disappointment in his eyes.

He seemed to finally make a decision, and he gestured for her to get off.

She was entirely disappointed in herself as well. Why wasn't she getting it? She got up and, sulkingly, stood to the side, waiting to be admonished.

But Snape didn't admonish her - instead he surprised her by squeezing himself into the tiny seat and, with a deep breath, he managed to sit on it, though he seemed afraid to put his whole weight on it.

He cast a couple of strengthening and supportive spells on the seat now that he was on it, and then he closed his eyes and said, sternly, "It looks like I'm going to have to *show* you. But know that I'm only doing this *once,* Granger, so watch closely."

He then stood back, and lifted his legs, and with a few effortful pumps, he was high in the air, and he said loudly, "Watch now," and he let himself fly off the swing.

It was like watching a mermaid catapult from the bottom of the ocean higher into the clear blue water. Hermione had never watched anything like it. Snape's legs wiggled a bit as he started off, but ultimately once he got in the swing of it, he glided through the air with relative effortlessness.

Then, with a dive, he landed back at her feet, though with a somewhat shaky landing.

"Now you," he said, and pushed her towards the swing.

"But what did you *do?*" she exclaimed.

"You said it yourself," he responded crisply, "it's like swimming. Do the breast-stroke or something if that makes it any easier, once you've got momentum."

"Thanks, that helps a lot," she responded sarcastically, as she pumped her legs and elevated her height.

Once she was high enough, she closed her eyes and let go, and, for lack of anything else, started doing the breast-stroke.

"Granger!" she heard Snape's voice far away. "Granger!"

She opened her eyes and discovered, to her great perplexity, that Snape was far below on the ground, and was running after her, his face red with the exertion, and his belly bouncing and rippling like a great deflated rubber ball with every step.

Soon enough he had enough momentum to follow her, and he leaped up, and was in the air with her.

Good timing, too, since Hermione was beginning to falter.

"Erm, how did I do this?" she whinged, and felt herself plummeting as doubt began to affect her.

"You can do it," he called to her, and grabbed her hand, stopping her from falling as fast. "You're doing very well. Just don't let yourself convince yourself it's not possible."

"I can," she replied with a huffing breath, "I can." She breathed deeply, and felt herself rise again. "It's so weird."

"Congratulations, Miss Granger," he said, wrapping her into his arms as he saw she was beginning to slip again, "you are officially more accomplished than nearly every other wizard on the face of the earth."

"I don't understand," she said, "it was… really so simple."

"Deceptively so," he said, and kissed her tenderly. "Oh yes," he said, wrapping his arms more tightly around her, "I knew you could do it."

"It's easier than apparating," she said, "and even less unsettling."

She broke away from his arms, and he grinned at her as she began to get more of a foothold of her new skill, testing her strength and agility with different strokes and methods.

"It really is like swimming," she murmured, "you sink if you don't tread."

"That's correct," he said, "but unlike water, you have a very swift maneuverability."

"It's great," Hermione said, and flipped herself in a loop, though regretted it as she felt her stomach lurch.

"Careful," he said, and floated closer to her, and extended his hand. "Don't want to be sick on some unsuspecting first-year."

She looked down and realized that they had somehow gotten over near a more populated area of the garden. It being such a dreary day, almost no one was out, but a few students were sitting around on the grounds; one group had a small bonfire keeping them warm.

"Can't they see us?" she asked, and looked at him inquiringly.

He shook his head. "Chameleon spell. They'll think we're bits of clouds, if they see us at all."

"Another ingenious discovery of yours?" Hermione asked, since she decided it was clear that Snape must have uncovered this practical skill of flying on his own.

He shook his head. "That one's my own creation," he said. "Flying, however," he went on, "is much, much older, and no, I did not rediscover it."

Hermione knew there was much more of a story there, but Snape didn't appear to be in the mood for questions. He seemed thoroughly tired, even if he probably wouldn't admit it to her, so Hermione decided she would begin to float back in the direction of her bedroom.

"Come on," she said, as he looked after her, "I'm quite knackered."

"All right," he said, and followed her wearily.

Something about their time out there had made him quiet, subdued, and Hermione didn't know what it was. Once they were back in her room - made chilly by the windows being left open, but that was soon remedied by closing them and stoking the fire - she wrapped him in warm blankets and thrust a warm cuppa in his hands, along with biscuits when he looked at her with the hungry disbelief of a cat given only a saucer of milk, with no fish. (She knew that look well on Crookshanks.)

"I haven't flown that long in a while," he confessed once he had a bit in his stomach. "I forgot how ...sad… it makes me."

Hermione curled around him. "It's all right," she said, "do you want to talk about it?"

He shook his wet hair. "Not particularly."

"That's fine," she said, and kissed him gently on the lips. His lips weren't precisely responsive, but he reciprocated just enough to show he was grateful, but not enough to demonstrate an interest in snogging.

"So," she asked, as she snuggled into his warm torso, "can I ask where that swing came from?"

"You can ask," he said, slowly, "but I think for the moment, I'm going to keep the details confidential. I'm… I'm not sure that I'm ready to reveal this story to you."

"I see," she said, and fondly stroked his cheek. "I can respect that."

"You'd better," he said grouchily, "and not ask me every day for the next month until I give in."

She laughed and pulled herself under the covers. "I'm ready for sleep," she began to say, but her stomach rumbled. "Dammit."

She sat up in bed, and accio'ed food from the kitchen. She was surprised to see a nice large bowl of ice cream come from the freezer.

"It looks like someone's taking care of you," said Snape as he looked with the same surprise she had. "That definitely was not in the ice box before."

"No," Hermione agreed, "it was not." She didn't tell him that, indeed, she'd already finished an additional bowl of ice cream that day when she was working on grading papers.

But she wasn't about to look a gift-horse in the mouth, so she set about eating every bite of that delicious bowl, with only a few bites finding their way into Snape's mouth.

He was, it seemed, properly knackered, and was snoring before she'd even finished her dessert.

Her stomach stopped its rumbling, fortunately, once she had swallowed every last bite of the ice cream, but Hermione realized that this insatiable hunger was not going to go away anytime soon.

So she cuddled up against Snape, feeling the warmth of her great expanded belly nestle into the pit of his broad dimpled back, and she fell asleep, her arm draped over him fondly.


	23. Chapter 23

Monday came, it did, and Hermione was invigorated for the week. She and Snape had breakfast together, accompanied with some kisses and nuzzling, and indeed they did give each other the pleasure of wanking in the shower, but soon enough she was off doing other things, and so was he.

Moreover, she'd spent enough time with Snape over the weekend that she felt like she'd been paid-attention-to, and she'd spent enough time doing carnal things that she was ready for some time being productive and introverted.

This she accomplished with aplomb, but I fear it's not much good for a story to write about the mundane features of her life. Suffice it to say, she was productive, did a lot of teaching, ate a great deal of food, and had a great deal of very heady sex with Snape in the evenings, when they both were free to spend time together.

What is notable is that she thought about Neville, but did not reach out to him most of the week, until finally her conscience couldn't bear it, and she knew she had to approach him.

He, unlike Certain Other professors she knew, was there in the Great Hall daily for every meal - it seems he never broke out of the habit cultivated from being a student, when eating was inherently more interesting than studying for everyone except Hermione and a couple of Ravenclaws.

So it was relatively simple for her to coordinate an encounter with him. After a particularly light period, where fortunately her students' practical efforts had been unusually rewarding, she was in a great mood, and she had the desire to gush. So she went to the Great Hall for her semi-dinner, and she saw Neville there, nervously trying to eat a sandwich that seemed as desperate to get out of his hands as he was to drop it.

"Not hungry?" she asked, as he half-heartedly scrambled after the slick ham and basil that fell into his plate.

He shrugged and threw down the remaining bread from his hand. "About the sum of it." He didn't look in her eyes.

"So," she asked, leaning towards him, though she was impressed by the fact that her tummy was big enough that it made leaning forward somewhat cumbersome. It squished into rolls. She was definitely entering the realm of being fat. "How are you?"

He seemed bewildered by her. "What are you doing?"

She raised an eyebrow. "What do you *think* I'm doing? I'm trying to flirt with you."

"It's working," he said narrowly, turning his eyes back to his sandwich. Then, with a deep breath, he added, "But it's not going to happen, 'Mione. Forget what I said that night."

"I can't," she said, turning her chair to face him better. "Now, what is it that made you change your mind?"

He shook his head, and finally, after a few moments of silence, managed to say, "You're dating *Snape.* There's not a wizard on earth that would touch you, not when you're under his *protection.*"

"What?" Hermione exclaimed, taken aback, "Has he said anything to you?"

"He doesn't have to," Neville responded, coldly. He stared at her, daring her to ask why.

"What," Hermione asked, moving in to a drilled-down glare. "Is it just that he's so intimidating you don't dare share the same piece of meat he fucks?"

Neville opened his mouth to reply the affirmative, but clearly thought better of it and closed his mouth again.

Hermione shook her head. "Seriously?" She sighed. "If you can get over the idea of me being Snape's property, then, Neville, maybe we can do something. As it is, though," she went on, standing up, "I'm perfectly content dropping the matter. I just hate to think that you'd stoop so low as to deny yourself the companionship you're desperate for just because of antiquated values pertaining to women and their bodies."

She looked to see if he had a response, and he didn't seem to, so she got up. "Whatever," she mumbled under her breath, "you boys are all wankers, every single one of you."

…

She was more disappointed than she allowed herself to feel, at least initially. But Severus was waiting for her that evening in his irresistable brocade waistcoat, which had clearly been a chore to put on, and she melted at the sight of him.

"Oh, gods," she breathed with a sigh as she saw him, "you look ravishing, but give me a moment."

He gingerly got up and followed her to the bedroom, where she collapsed in bed, facefirst. He joined her there, laying down next to her, facing the ceiling.

"What's wrong?" he asked, after moments of silence. His words were labored, but just slightly - as if he were trying to keep himself from sounding eager to help.

"Neville," she groaned. "I finally had a moment to connect with him today, and he won't even consider touching me. Thinks of me as *your* property."

"I can't say I'm not pleased, to an extent," Snape breathed, touching her shoulder and rubbing it. "But I'm sorry you had that disappointment."

"I mean," Hermione went on, "I wasn't particularly anxious about it, which makes it worse, I suppose - I felt like I had the upper hand of this relationship, like I was the one being sought-after, and I didn't think I'd have to work to get it started. I thought it'd ignite quickly when I chose to start it, like kindling, you know?"

"I hear you," he responded sullenly, "though that's never, ever, been my own experience. Particularly the way I look now."

"Shush," Hermione said, rolling over and looking at him with mocking disapproval. "I'll not have you say unkind things about my new favorite person."

Snape's cell-phone buzzed at that moment, in his trouser-pocket, and he opened it quickly to see what the message was, then quickly closed it again.

"What is it?" Hermione asked.

Severus shook his head. "Nothing important."

Hermione squinted at him and said, "Come now. Tell me. Anything to distract me from these feelings of having been let down."

"All right," Snape said with a half-grin, "here."

He showed Hermione a very blurry photo of a broad-shouldered trans woman and a plump, soft black girl. The girl was wearing a skintight bodysuit, bearing a whip, and the trans woman was bound in a thousand knots to a chair, backwards. The trans woman had a look in her eyes of pleading, begging, while the dominating girl grinned provocatively. The photo was clearly of a boudoir nature.

"That's Erika," he said, and Hermione looked at him.

"I presume the… younger one?" she asked, not sure how to proceed in this kind of situation.

He nearly giggled, since he'd clearly been conscious of the awkwardness of it.

"She's the black one," he said, with a bit of a snigger, "the other is Marielle, one of her other major partners. Granted, Marielle did just move to DC, so there's that difficulty."

Hermione was someone who did have a minor interest in the occasional woman, though honestly she'd always tended to date men, but she looked at Erika and admired her delightful, full lips, her full and sensuous curves (accentuated in her present attire) and sparkle of excitement in her eyes.

Her attention was more drawn to Marielle, however, despite herself - she really wanted to read Marielle as a woman, entirely, but Marielle had many features of manliness that shone through, like her torso's build and heavy jaw.

Of the two of them, Hermione noted, Marielle was also much fatter, with a sumptuous belly forming around her middle, a bona-fide spare-tire.

"I like them both," Hermione said, "though I admit I'm a little more partial to Marielle."

"Hm," Snape said, looking at the photograph again. "Really?"

"Yeah," Hermione said, one hand wandering down his torso, "really."

"Noted," he said, and kissed her gently, a prelude to ones of more intensity later. "So," he added, "Why?"

"Do I need a good reason?" she asked, patting his enormous belly thoughtfully. It gurgled involuntarily as she touched it.

"My dear," he confessed, "Can't we continue this over dinner?"

"Of course," she responded happily, and rose from the bed and followed him to the dining room.

….

*Hi readers~! Sorry this chapter is so short. Next one will be sexii?

So there's a not-very-major inconsistency that's been bothering me… I'll eventually go back and fix it but not today… in the 2nd or 3rd chapter, Snape says something like 'yo that's why we gotta get an honors program' and then in the mid teens I have a major conversation where Hermione's like 'yo so honors programs this is what they are.'

I guess it's not the biggest inconsistency but it's something that bothers me every time I re-read, so I wanted to apologize profusely for this error. Since obviously the point of this fic is the *plot,* lol. I think it's clear I care a lot about HOGWARTS HAVING AN HONORS PROGRAM so much that I forgot which character cared about this idea too.

Okay thanks bunches carry on :) Also please review because it makes rainbows fly out of the seat of my pants. And gets me more excited about writing the next chapter. :) obvs some of you have been really awesome about it like ARYNWY and Smithback and Reaping-Vampire and LoveIntheBattlefield but I'm hoping others of you comment more! Particularly tell me what you like because that really makes me happy :)

ALSO OMG OMG OMG OMG SOMEONE ('Fattington' on DeviantArt) MADE ME FANART.

google "fattington deviantart growing" and you should find it!

and then you will see the hills are alive with the sight of fat snape :) holy cow I'm so happy you have no idea.

….


	24. Chapter 24

Hermione and Severus were soon sitting at a table laden with a sumptuous dinner that threatened to engulf the table.

Snape wasted no time in serving Hermione a heaping bowl of pasta, laced with fine cheese, bits of lobster, pepper, and paprika, and she delighted in slurping up noodle after noodle. They were starchy and thick linguini, and they stuck on her fork as lovingly as they'd stick on her middle once digested.

He gave a small smirk of satisfaction as her tongue made love to her fork. It was only after deciding that she indeed liked her food that he began to look over the offerings, and selected a large veal, ham, and egg pie.

"Oh yes," Hermione observed with a rush of lust as he tucked into it, and a smile came to his face as he stuffed a forkful into his mouth and swallowed it in just a few hasty chews. "You're quite hungry, aren't you."

"Yes," he admitted, and stuffed another bite in his mouth without further deliberation.

She put another bite of chewy pasta in her mouth, and he nodded approvingly, watching as he chewed.

They ate in contented silence until the edge of hunger no longer plagued them, and Snape had eaten nearly half the pie, and Hermione had sucked down the entire bowl of noodles.

"You're so nice and full-looking," Snape said shyly, taking a sip of his wine. "It suits you very well."

"Same to you," Hermione said with a smile, brushing her hair out of her eyes. "You just can't keep your appetite in check, can you?"

"No," he returned, with a rueful smile. Then he commenced to start on a full plate of fish and chips, with tartar sauce and vinegar, and boiled peas on the side. "Can you blame me, though?"

"Not at all," Hermione responded, and was already halfway through a slice of a large pizza. She swallowed a bit with onion, olive, and basil, and pushed it in Snape's direction. "You might not give this back to me, but you should try this."

"Mmm," he responded, a wicked smile blooming on his face, but he didn't stop chewing his food. With his free hand, he took two slices and gave back the rest.

"So, how was your day?" Hermione went on.

He shook his head, swallowed, and poised his fork to take another stab at the pie. "No news fit to print," he said, "I admit I'm getting fatigued with trying to keep up with all the requirements necessary to continue my work. But at least I've made some major strides." He took a bite, and went on, "Today I finished the grant request to the Veritas Foundation, which, I'm sure you know I've been losing a bit of sleep over. It's not every day that one sends a proposal to the pre-eminent provider of non-governmental subsidies in Europe. So I'm glad to be done with that. Grant-writing is tedious," he grumbled, and stuffed his mouth again.

"I hear you," she responded, and relaxed a little bit more into her chair, adjusting the band of her skirt, which was beginning to dig into her belly. She then began to feel curious about the status of their potions conference plans, which they'd expounded upon some time ago, and Snape said he would begin to make the preparations. "What about the application to Potions-Masters Invested in Thought?" she asked. "I don't mean to pressure you, if you're too busy, but have you started on that?"

"I did," he said with a smirk, "Last week, right after we talked about it. And I finished it yesterday. I thought I told you?"

"Oh, I'm silly," she replied, "You did tell me. I just lost it in the mess of my brain. I know we've been talking it to death, but can I read it?"

He nodded, and accio'ed his laptop from the table. "I haven't sent it, of course," he said with a smile, "Given it's more of a… collaborative effort."

She playfully patted his tummy - "Not our only 'collaborative effort'," she said teasingly - and slid the laptop towards her. With a few clicks, she was down the page, processing the information at top speed. Though when she tried to make an edit, a large pastry crumb was stuck in between the S key and the face of the keyboard. She flicked at it, and it flew across the room.

"You duck," she said with a giggle, "you tend to snack when you're working on something, don't you?"

"Guilty," he murmured, and he moved his chair so he could see where she was in the document. He leaned forward and, hesitantly, wrapped an arm around her and put his head on her shoulder. "Many of my current pounds are a result of it."

"I like it that way," Hermione murmured with half of her attention, placing a hand on his vast belly as it pressed against her, and continuing to read.

She made a few changes. "So wait, so what's this you're saying here? Are you saying that this entire potential section would be interdisciplinary? Or that just this particular subsection would be interdisciplinary?"

"The entire section, of course," he replied with the mildest of annoyance. "That's why I wrote 'The three components of this would be…'"

"It's just the referent isn't that clear," Hermione said, "so I'll just restate 'the section.'"

"Fine," he responded, and she continued to read. He sat up again, grabbed the pie plate and his fork, and ate while holding it, his eyes never leaving the screen.

"Change that word," he said as she was reading, "from singular to plural."

"All right," she said, and changed it.

They fell into a comfortable editing posture, Snape re-reading for surely the umpteenth time, and Hermione reading with fresh eyes. She realized how lovely this experience was as she listened to his breathing, and felt it against her neck, and she felt in that moment how happy she was to not be with Ron anymore.

Ron would never sit there with her, reviewing alongside her - he never put much pride in his written work, whereas Snape clearly did, even if he denied it. Ron would never help her put together a conference to advance wizarding knowledge. Ron's work had never been interesting enough to talk about with her regularly. Ron would never enjoy being comfortable and fat with her, basking in the warm feeling of being nice and full, and occupied by a mental project.

Snape gave her a sip of wine once in a while, sharing from his glass. The sweet dark merlot was warming and luscious, and it tasted exactly like she felt when Snape wrapped his arm around her and stroked her loose hair tenderly with his fingers.

Soon Hermione finished, and after a few other changes, she breathed, "You know, I think this is quite good. Now," she added, "is this the first time you're applying for funding from P-MIT, or its parent organization, AcademiVest?"

"Yes," Snape said, his voice low and comfortable, "Have you done it before?"

"I submitted a proposal a few years ago," Hermione said, "for the public advocate's office, they were trying to conduct a study on quality of life, and we had to submit a proposal to AcidemiVest for funding to pay for the survey team. I think the witch in charge there then is still here; her name is Malaenie Creight. She and I corresponded quite a bit. I know she's a real stickler about formatting. I'm guessing you didn't look at the guidelines too closely."

"I assumed it wasn't that important," Snape said with a grimace, withdrawing his arm from around her shoulders and sitting back in his chair, cracking his neck. "Apparently, I was wrong."

"Yes, with Malaenie, she has been reviewing these applications for nearly fifty years, and she's a bit trigger-happy with her rejections. If you don't mind, I know exactly what to fix."

"Be my guest," Snape said, picking up and munching on the final bit of pie. "I'm not displeased to let you finish this."

"You did most of the grunt work, though," Hermione said, and kissed his cheek. "It's really flawless, aside from this."

"...thank you," he said, though the words seemed to be hard for him to say. His mouth curled into a half-smile, and he kissed her on the cheek as well.

"When you're done," he said, "I expect to entertain you in a different fashion."

"Please do," she said, "but let me finish."

He put down his empty plate and drew his arm around her again, this time settling around her middle and grabbing at her nice fleshy love-handle.

His fingers worked their way a little further down, down, and down again until she firmly grabbed his hand and set it back where it had started. He obeyed her implicit command until she finished, and then he grabbed her again with a growl of hunger and lust, and he put his hand under her rump and moved her onto his lap.

"Mm," he said as she settled there, and she started unbuttoning her bodice, "you're getting a bit big, my dear. Soon I won't be able to keep you here, your delightful arse will simply be…"

He cupped it, and petted it, "...too large."

"Won't be *entirely* my fault," Hermione said with a snicker, "your lap is getting smaller every day."

"True," he responded, and sighed as Hermione put both her hands on top of his belly, nearly purring as she rubbed it.

Then, without further ado, she slipped off his lap - despite being so fat, his knees were quite knobby - and sliced up a cake that sat, freshly iced upon the table.

"Sit back," she instructed, and he obeyed, stretching his spine by inching his arse forward in the chair and readjusting the lumbar pillow. "Now eat," she commanded, an enormous spoonful of cake in front of his face.

He did not delay, and his wide mouth embraced the cake, which was a nice heavy carrot cake with generous icing. "Oh," he murmured, as Hermione's hand massaged his gut. "It's glorious. But I don't know if I'll be able to finish it. I ate a little too much today already."

"A little too much?" Hermione purred, rubbing his belly all over, landing finally at the base of his gut, where the waistcoat threatened to break at any moment. "I don't think you got as big as you are today by eating 'a little too much,' Severus."

"What do you mean?" he asked, playing.

... (the middle of this chapter is on A03!) ...

"I don't know… how you do it," Snape said, taking deep breaths and sitting back in his chair, clearly as stuffed as he could be. "Change of plans. No more work for me tonight."

"You look quite done in," Hermione responded with a grin, and she eased herself off of the table. "Let's get ourselves to bed, shall we?"

"Quite," he responded, and with her help, he eased himself up out of his chair, leaving a beautiful arse-sized imprint in the cushion.

"Come," Hermione said, offering her arm, and they strolled to the bedroom.

When Snape sat down to take off his shoes, the waistcoat decided enough was enough, and it lost several buttons, in one frantic attempt to launch them to the moon.

"Well then," Hermione said, with a giddy giggle, "that's almost enough to make me come again."

"I'm getting fat," Snape said, a dopamine-influenced, bubbly smile coming to his face. It was a rare sight for him to be so unequivocally delighted. "Look at that."

She bent down laboriously to collect the buttons, and put them in a box near her bed. "That waistcoat seems to have lost its waist," she said, and broke down into giggles herself.

Snape chuckled and undid the upper few buttons that still strained against his massive belly. "Oh, much better," he breathed, and he lay back, whereupon he began to undo his straining shirt-buttons as well.

"You can still talk," Hermione said with a wink, "so now we're in bed, let's see if we can top off your tank with just a little bit more."

"All right," he mumbled, and pulled off his shirt wearily. "It won't be much."

Hermione accio'ed something sweet from the kitchen, and found to her delight that the magic bowl of ice cream was filled and waiting.

"Here we go," she said, and she fed him bite by bite as he leaned against the headboard, his chin raised and both hands rubbing his distended, overfull tummy.

"Heavenly," he murmured, swallowing. "So. Yes."

Of course, he himself underestimated how much he could pack in his belly, and they managed to get nearly the entire bowl inside him before he put a hand over his mouth and shook his head woozily.

"All right," Hermione said, and finished off the rest, which was enough to make her feel nearly as stuffed as him.

"I wonder how that bowl came to be," she murmured, and he gingerly shrugged, and swallowed to keep his food down. "It's a mystery, really."

He nodded incrementally, and she kissed him on the cheek. "Let me help you readjust and lay down."

He accepted her help, and soon he was on his side, in such a position where she lay beside him, wrapped her arm around him, and massaged his upper belly.

"You did a very good job," she whispered in his ear, "you ate almost everything. You're going to keep growing, and growing fast."

He just sighed in reply and she looked to see that he had closed his eyes, and was probably drifting off.

"Good night," she murmured, and snuffed out the lights with a wave of her hand.

As she drifted off to sleep, she thought she heard a tiny sigh of anguish come from the clothes-closet, but she might have just dreamed it.

…...

Thanks to all the reviewers who are reviewing and are great. Your face is great. You're great. So great. Greatness. Great. Great. Great. Much love!

Note: To the anonymous reviewer who was put off by Hermione's bisexual tendencies revealed last chapter sort-of randomly: thanks for your comment. I'm sorry you might not read this. The thing is, this writing isn't a perfect work of art. It's never been intended to be. I don't edit in any sense of the word. I plough through, with a word goal of about 2000 words, and post what is effectively my first draft of every chapter. Some authors on fanfiction deliberate a little more, and take more pride in their work. I don't. I have my reasons. So if things are a little uneven here and there, then that's why. I think you're giving me more credit than I deserve - I definitely don't do the 'what kink/theme shall I add today' bit. I have a couple of plot questions I try to answer every chapter - e.g. 'what's happening with Neville?' and 'how's Snape's relationship with Erika?' - and everything else arrives organically.


	25. Chapter 25

She woke up to the sound of him belaboredly putting on his clothes, grunting in dismay as he struggled to get his trousers buttoned.

"Hey," said in a soft whisper, and reached out to grasp his hand. He sighed deeply and extended it to her, half-heartedly.

She took it warmly, sat up, and wrapped herself around him. He smelled deliciously unshowered, and her lips found their way to the sensitive place under his earlobe and kissed him sweetly.

"Morning," she said, turning his head to look at her, and she pressed her lips into his.

He reciprocated, but only minimally, and then he began to try at his trousers again.

"What's wrong?" she asked, moving back slightly and putting her hand on his shoulder. "Can I be helpful?"

"Not really," he said, his voice low and dark. "It's just the usual sort of thing." He shook his head and, with a grimace, accio'ed a bottle of pills. Not looking at her, he opened the bottle and put two pills in his mouth, and swallowed them dry.

Hermione saw his tense shoulders immediately relax, though the gloom did not move from him.

"I'm going to feel like crap all day," he said, standing up and struggling with his shirt, having given up on his trousers.

"You forgot your medicine last night?" Hermione said, letting her hand settle on his ample waist. "I didn't know you take it at night. I've never seen you take it at all, actually."

He turned his head and glared at the closet. "I don't like to talk about it."

"So you hide it?" Hermione asked, letting her hand fall into her lap.

He didn't answer, but hurriedly put the bottle in his pocket.

"It's okay," she said with a gentle murmur, "I don't know what you're afraid of, but don't be. Please."

He tugged at his shirt one final time and turned around. His face was sullen. "I'm afraid of your pity," he said after a moment of careful, calculated hesitation. "If we're going to do this, Granger, you've got to respect me, and never pity me. I'm not a creature that you need to protect from himself."

She listened, and realized he was right to be afraid. She *did* have somewhat protective feelings for him, and she realized that they really came from a very convoluted place. Was there pity in there? She supposed so. But it was more than that.

"I don't think that's my problem, exactly," she said thoughtfully, "though I can understand why you wouldn't want that."

He did not respond, instead gazing at her suspiciously, so she went on, "I do respect you, I truly do. It does make me sad when I see you so adamant about your pride that you can't be vulnerable."

"I don't think that's accurate," he said with a grimace, sitting gingerly on the edge of the bed. "I'm plenty vulnerable with you. More than I should be."

She reached out for his hand, and he turned his head away, but took her hand in his.

"Maybe," she said, "I suppose if you feel that way, then that's how you feel. But here's what I'm seeing." She took a breath - this was getting into risky territory, but she felt like they had enough of a relationship between them now that he could handle it.

"I'm seeing that you go back and forth with me," she said, and he remained stony-faced, staring at the wall to his left. "One moment you're very vulnerable with me, and so… so open. Then you seem to regret it, and close up again. I don't blame you," she went on, "but that's what I'm seeing."

He stirred, and took a deep breath, but did not respond for a long time. "That coincides with my experience," he said at last.

She smiled at him, even though he wasn't making eye contact with her. "Well, it's not a bad thing," she said, "though it is a bit confusing at times. I struggle because I feel like those times that you're more closed are my fault, somehow."

"Sometimes they are," he responded coldly. He continued to stare in the opposite direction.

"And how is that?" Hermione said, feeling her throat get tighter.

He shook his head, struggling to answer, until he finally said, "You listen to me. And you ask me damned difficult questions. And you make me…" He swallowed harshly. "...sometimes you make me forget the things that have happened to me. At least for a while. I forget how fucked up I am, and how I fucked up *everything.* And I enjoy my life, and my obscene sexual interests, and the fact that I'm not worthy of anyone fucking at all. Much less anything else."

"Anything else, meaning what?" Hermione asked, though she could tell where he was going with this, and it made her insides crawl with anticipation.

He turned his head and searched her face. His eyes were fierce and bright and shiny, and his upper lip twitched.

"What do you think I mean?" he responded lowly, his face hard and impassive.

"I'm not quite sure I know," Hermione replied, and tried not to let him know she was playing with him.

He could tell though, and rolled his eyes. "Do I *have* to spell it out for you?"

"I'm afraid so," she replied, feeling thrilled at the high level of emotion in this conversation. He was having such trouble. It was such a glorious feeling, watching him try to do something so profoundly difficult for him. He was getting there, if slowly.

He opened his mouth as if to curse at her, but decided better and reformed his lips into a pressed line.

Then he tried again. "I'm not worthy of anyone fucking. Much less," he said, and stared penetratingly at her, as if she were a dungbomb about to explode, "loving."

"So wait," Hermione said, leaning forward and putting a hand on his shoulder. He shrugged it off with a jittering shake. "What are you saying exactly?"

He looked as if he wished something would interrupt them. Anything.

And as it happened, something did. There was a clatter as the antique bedside table's legs broke, and all of Hermione's papers and such fell on the floor in an avalanche of parchment, along with dishes from last night's binge.

"Shit," Hermione said, and reflexively grabbed her wand and caught the clattering mess in the nick of time. With an effortless spell, she sent the mess to the bureau, where it settled with a gentle rustle. "Was that you?" she asked.

"...Yes, sorry," he said carelessly, appearing distracted. He got up and, tiptoeing in his stocking-feet, he moved towards the closet.

"What are you-" Hermione began, but Snape put a finger to his lips, telling her to be quiet. He was remarkably silent on his feet, despite his enormous size.

Then, with a flash, he threw a spell, and the closet door banged open. Hermione saw the sight of Lowly looking terrified for just a moment before the elf blinked out of sight. In her haste, she had forgotten someone.

Hermione had never seen a fat house-elf, and at the sight of one, she had no idea how to react. The elf that sat in her closet was truly enormous. She could not tell if it was male or female, but the creature smiled brightly up at Snape, though looked somewhat dismayed by Snape's curdling expression.

"Hi," squeaked the elf, "Master Severus?"

"What are you doing in here?" asked Snape, and Hermione could actually hear Snape's voice had a trace of fear in it.

The elf smiled broadly. "Watching you!"

Hermione bounced over to the closet and got on her knees. Snape seemed content to stand and glare at the creature.

"Well, hello there," Hermione said kindly, extending her hand.

She noticed that the elf was wearing a hat - a sloppy, handmade, wool hat. It sat awkwardly, too large on the elf's head.

"Miss 'Mione!" chirped the elf sadly. It pushed the brim of the hat up its forehead, only for it to come slipping back down into its eyes again. The elf tried to smile as it pushed the hat up again. "You, who made me a free elf!"

"I beg your pardon," Hermione said, though as she squinted, she could recognize the hat that the elf wore. It was - uncannily enough - her own knitting work. She remembered working on this particular item - she'd been experimenting with her stitches.

"You freed me," said the elf, no less sad. "My name is Fancy, if you please?"

"Hello, Fancy," Hermione said, and waves of sadness began to overcome her as she remembered making hats and mittens and such for the elves - and none had been taken.

Apparently she had miscounted, because here was one that had somehow gotten to a new owner, as intended.

"Are you glad to be free?" Hermione asked, and Snape rolled his eyes and went to lay down on the bed. She heard him grab some papers, and she glanced over to see he was re-reading some grant materials that he had printed. So stubborn, he was.

"Of… of course?" answered the elf, though it sounded uncertain. "I am pleased with my lot in life."

"I'm glad," Hermione said, but was interrupted by the elf, who went on (in as deferential way as possible).

"I was a little *more* pleased with my life before I was free, though."

"I see," Hermione said, and felt a confused pang of regret. She wasn't sure if she should have done more to free the elves or listened to those around her who told her she was wrong to care. "And you have been free for many years now?"

"Many!" exclaimed the elf a little more brightly. "But I'm so sorry," the elf said, "to disturb you during your talk. Fancy thought she was quiet. Please carry on as you were, Lowly will be back to get me, soon."

"What," Snape asked dryly from the bed, apparently not able to tune out the conversation as well as he'd hoped, "you can't leave on your own?"

"No," answered the elf, and began to sniffle. "Fancy cannot."

"Why is that?" Hermione asked, kindly as she could manage. She was afraid of the answer.

"They changed the wards once Dobby was gone, Miss Hermione," said Fancy. "Free elves no longer can go around the castle on their own. They only let Dobby do it for Master Potter, because he is a Very Important Person."

"Are there many free elves?" Hermione asked, gently extending her hand to offer it to Fancy.

Fancy responded warmly, by grabbing Hermione's hand. "Not so many," she said, "just Fancy, I think. Though I do not know."

"I'm so sorry," Hermione said, realizing that Fancy seemed to be lonely. "You don't know of anyone else?"

"No," Fancy said, and sighed. "She doesn't either. It's all right, though," she - at least Hermione thought Fancy might be a she - went on, smiling bravely. "Fancy is well cared for, as you see." She patted her enormous stomach, which hung low out of her tunic. Then she grasped onto Hermione's hand and, with a great effort, stood onto her own two feet, where she wobbled unsteadily. "Lowly is my new Master," she went on softly, "since Hogwarts no longer is. And Lowly is a very kind Master." She gave a little hiccup, and uneasily sat down again.

"I see," Hermione said, and did some mental calculus. "How long have you and Lowly been watching us?"

"A short while," Fancy responded with delight. "We've been doing what you and Master Severus do! And I have gotten very fat," she said with a purr of pride.

"Oh gods," Snape said from across the room, hurriedly, as if he had been expecting this revelation somehow, and he clapped his hands. "Lowly?"

The other elf popped into the room, clearly white with mortification.

"Master Severus?" Lowly responded, not daring to look up at either Snape or Hermione.

Snape sat up wearily and shook his head. "You and Fancy need to stop this. Stop it now."

"We see," Lowly said, trembling and shaking. "We shall stop, Master Severus. We shall stop watching you."

"No," Snape said, his voice as hard as steel. "Not just that. You need to stop the feeding, too."

"We see," Lowly said.

"Get her back to normal," Snape said with a frown. "You've abused your power. You are no longer Fancy's master, Lowly. I have no idea how this started, but it ends now."

"But… but Fancy chose to be her servant," Fancy exclaimed from the closet, "Fancy is *hers!*"

"Not anymore," Snape said coldly. "You are relieved of your service to Lowly, Fancy. Lowly," Snape added, and the elf looked up with a strained smile, "you will care for Fancy as one of your own brethren. Fancy is *not* allowed to become a servant to any other elf. And Fancy must be permitted to work again as a servant of Hogwarts, if she chooses. She *must* be given the ability to travel through the wards again. Am I understood?"

"...yes, Master Severus," Lowly said, still white and shaking. Lowly then hurried to the closet, put her hand on Fancy's shoulder, and blinked out of the space.

"Gods," Snape said, laying down again. "I can't believe this. I truly can't."

"I don't know what to think either," Hermione said, also unnerved.

"That settles it," Snape said with a frown, staring at the ceiling, his fingers steepled on his chest. "We've got to stop this."

She didn't need to ask *what* they needed to stop. But the disappointment was immense. "What about… what about everything we've talked about?" Hermione asked, dismay filling her. She sat on the floor and leaned back against the wall. "I thought we were… well…"

He turned his head and glared at her. "It's clear that this is no longer about two consenting adults doing something… unusual… in privacy," he said, resolution in his voice. "This goes beyond us.

"The world already sees us, as unusual, Hermione," he went on, glum but resolved, "in the sense that we're both intelligent beyond the comprehension of most of the feeble-minded dunderheads in the world. Why alienate ourselves even further by committing the sin of gluttony? Aren't we both isolated enough without trying to make us even more distant and unreachable? Being intelligent already has enough dangers as it is. Being fat - well, there's no surer path to being hated."

Hermione squinted at him. "That's very Catholic-sounding."

"My father," he said with a twinge.

He sighed. "And what of the other impressionable fools who see us," he went on, closing his eyes and touching the bridge of his nose with his fingers, "Gods! Influencing a houseelf. That's… like convincing a kitten to kill itself. Poor creature. That's a sight I *never* want to see again."

"Neither do I," Hermione admitted. The whole situation had left her feeling uneasy, and Snape's melodrama wasn't helping.

"Fortunately," Snape said, "this was an early reminder." He stood up with a sigh, and started pacing. "Even when we think we are alone," he murmured, bitterly, "our actions have consequences. This will only become worse the farther along we go. So, stopping seems to be the most logical course of action to protect those around us."

"Why?" Hermione asked. "What will become worse?"

Snape rolled his eyes and kept pacing, his hands folded behind his back, his gait vigorous and betraying his distress. "People have not begun to notice you getting bigger, yet," he said, "at least, not *really.* But it won't be long before people do start noticing you. And then, they will be horrible to you."

He threw himself in a chair and glared at the coat-rack. Hermione did not answer him, so he went on, "Why would I want to curse you to a life of looking like me? People hate fat people. I confess it's hard for *me* not to hate *me* for being so fat. So I refuse."

She looked at him quizzically. "Refuse what?"

He shook his head, his hair covering his face moodily. "I refuse to begin walking you down a path towards universal loathing."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Oh come now."

"No," he said, finally able to meet her eyes. "No. We can't do this any longer."

There was fear in his voice and eyes, she could tell, and it wasn't getting better the more he spoke.

She got up and moved towards him. He was sweating profusely, and his forehead was cold to the touch.

"Are you all right?" she asked, and wiped his brow with the back of her hand.

"Perfectly," he lied, but he maintained eye contact with her, testing her, daring her to call him on it.

She threw up her hands. "Fine," she said, "so you just get to make decisions for the both of us, is that right?"

He seemed to retract his dominance visibly, becoming more withdrawn and observational, and he scrutinized her face carefully, not responding.

"Great," she said crossly, "Glad to know I've got someone else looking out for what's best for me who doesn't even bother to solicit my opinion in the matter."

She flounced away from him and went to manhandle the stray papers on the bureau.

"I...you…" Snape tried to form a coherent thought, but her back was turned to him, and he hesitated.

Finally, after some reflection, he proposed, "We could keep feeding me up, though. Perhaps just not as often."

"Thanks, I really appreciate it," Hermione said with sullen sarcasticness, not bothering to look back at him. "My body also appreciates being told what to do. It's so refreshing. I've never had to contend with other people commenting on what I should do about my body before."

"You must understand," Snape said, though he sounded defeated already. "I'm just thinking of what's truly best for you."

"You certainly know better than I do," Hermione quipped in response.

"You know," he went on, though his heart was not in the argument anymore. "I am older than you. In theory, I *should* know better."

"I'm so glad you do," Hermione said, "I'm sure I'd have been dead long ago without you by my side."

She was definitely not pleased with this course of events, and she mostly just wanted him to leave.

What on earth was his problem? They'd been *just* at the point where they'd really gotten to know and appreciate each others' bodies, and were on the beginning of a beautiful sexual and romantic journey. Why the hell did he have to fuck it up?

*Oh.* Her mind went of its own accord to their prior conversation, about him being afraid of fucking things up, and self-destructing things that were going well.

"Okay," she said, with a deep breath, and she took another for good measure. "Okay."

She then turned around and faced him, though with a stern look on her face. "Okay."

And then she marched over to where he sat, shoulders slumped and belly hanging between his wide-spread legs, and she slapped him across the face before he could blink at her.

He was startled, and glared at her. "Hey," he began, but she slapped him again across his fat delicious face.

He was thoroughly perplexed, and remained silent thereafter.

"What do you think was the reason I did that?" Hermione asked.

He took a breath, and put a hand to his cheek. "Erm," he began, and decided, "Because you are asserting your right to autonomy, which I was trespassing upon."

"Yes," Hermione agreed, "but go on."

"Because you don't want me to change the way we have negotiated our relationship without consulting you in making changes?"

"Yes," Hermione agreed, "but there's more."

He curled his lip under and appeared thoughtful. "You don't accept that our actions have broader effects on the people outside of our personal relationship."

"Yes, but not what I'm going for," Hermione said, "What was it that you were talking about very recently about… losing people?"

Snape opened his mouth to respond, but saw there seemed to be no use for it, and he closed his mouth again and bowed his head.

"I won't say that it's entirely relevant here," he responded finally, not able to look at her. "But I think you are right to remind me of the phenomenon."

"Right," Hermione said grimly. "Now you're going to take a moment and think about what you said, and come up with an alternative."

His face was very expressive as it twisted for a few moments, revealing his frustration and anger, but it was amazing how he managed to suddenly bottle those emotions. His face became visibly blank, and he appeared thoughtful but phlegmatic.

After a few moments of thoughtful silence, he said, "Hermione, I'm going to respectfully ask that we talk about what our relationship should look like going forward. I'm of the opinion that it's possibly dangerous for you to gain weight at a rapid pace, for not only biological reasons but because of the social implications."

Hermione smiled, and lay down on the bed, stomach-first, to look at Snape carefully.

"Thanks for your concern," she said brightly, "but I'm happy with the way things are, thanks very much."

He took a deep heaving breath. "I see," he said with a groan of despair. "Then what do you propose to do with my conscience, which is already showing signs of poisoning the small seedling of integrity that I've been trying to grow?"

"Integrity?" Hermione asked with a laugh. "What, you mean your response to the Fancy and Lowly situation is one based on *integrity?*"

"Scoff if you like, Granger," he said moodily, kicking at the floor with the toe of his stockinged foot. "It's… it's important that my own self-destruction not have an impact on others."

"I understand," Hermione said, and wrapped herself around his plump body. "I do." She let her fingers sink into the crevice between his belly and his thigh, and it was so hot and warm there. She loved feeling his stomach expand and contract with every breath. It was like her fingers were in an ocean of warmth with the rising and ebbing tide around them.

"Then what say you?" he asked, and she realized his breaths were getting shallower as he tried unsuccessfully to suck in his massive gut.

She removed her hand, and he began to breathe normally again. It was clear that fat play was not something he was particularly interested in right now.

"Do whatever you like," Hermione said, smiling but firm. "I will support you in whatever you want to do - whether that's getting thinner, getting fatter, staying the same, or just letting nature take its course. But," she went on, "I ask you to extend me the same courtesy. Don't tell me to stop enjoying my food, or modify my eating habits in any way."

"Fine," he agreed, "is that all?"

"Well," she said with a small smile, looking up at him, "I'd like if you still let me enjoy your fat."

He looked at her incredulously. "And what if, by some unusual chance, I become a thin man again?"

"Everyone has fat," Hermione said. "Even thin people. It's a matter of quantity."

He grimaced. "I suppose. So," Snape said, a bit more hopefully, "is it possible that the actual intent to gain weight is something that we can leave aside?"

"That's what I said," Hermione said, standing up and going to look at her figure in the mirror. It was fascinating to see how much more of it she filled up than she used to. Her tummy had emerged into its own, developing from a modest pot-belly to a full round mass of blubber, creamy and growing steadily heavier with every pound. She prodded her nice fat sides and made them wiggle.

Snape shifted his legs uncomfortably, and his breathing quickened immediately.

"Don't you like this?" she asked, settling herself on the edge of the bed. "I certainly do." She cupped her belly in her hand and cradled it. "Look at this nice pillow of soft jelly. It's so warm to the touch and feels so comforting."

"Wait until you're laughed at," he murmured raspily, as if trying to convince himself. "Wait until you are the object of scorn for everyone in the castle."

"Look at my breasts," she begged him, "aren't they divine? Please tell me if they aren't the most beautiful pair you've ever seen."

"My opinion's worth nothing," he replied, as if not quite hearing her, "what will beautiful breasts do when you're alone and no one will help you?"

"I have no intention of being alone," Hermione said, cozying up to him more, and wrapping her arm around him, "not when I have you."

His face was dark with unexpressed emotion. "But I won't be around forever."

"And when you're gone," Hermione replied, "I still won't give a fig about what other people think."

"Oh," he murmured as she kissed him, and he leaned back on the bed as she voraciously kissed him. "Oh."

Several minutes later, he murmured, "Granger, you *must* have been a Slytherin in some past existence. I don't know what you do to me, but-"

"-Shh," she whispered back. "It's all right. Let's just be quiet here together for a while."

Soon the sound of their gentle snores filled the room.

notes

Dear readers who like this fic: Sorry for lack of regular updates, real life stuff has been overwhelming lately. Thank you for reading and reviewing, you're the greatest. Also please check out more art I commissioned from fattington at deviantart. (Google 'fattington deviantart growing' and look at fattington's gallery!)

…. warning, soapbox ahoy! ….

Dear readers who leave reviews telling me it's 'unhealthy' and 'out of character' and 'the amount they're eating is unrealistic' and such: this is a piece of fiction written in the genre of weight gain fiction. Within the realm of said genre, my writing is consistent with those norms. I understand that if this isn't something you've previously been acquainted with, then you might be shocked and disturbed. I can't say I didn't warn you - the label on the tin is pretty clear. Don't like, don't read. I think this fic counts as a 'rule 34 of the internet' type of fic. Take it in that spirit, please. And seriously: If you don't like it, stop reading it. Take the story off your alerts. And stop commenting your hate. It bums me out and I don't publish your comments anyway.

I've been getting one lovely troll repeatedly telling me "you clearly are mentally ill because you wrote this disgusting thing." I'd like to observe that this is really offensive to over twenty-five percent of the U.S. population. Over 60 million people in the U.S. alone experience some kind of mental illness or disorder in any given year (according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 2013). This number is inclusive of mood disorders like depression and psychotic disorders like schizophrenia. Please be respectful towards those who struggle with mental illness.

Moreover: Exploring sexual fantasies through writing is hardly a symptom of mental illness. It is a natural thing to experience sexual fantasies that don't fit within typical bounds of what sexual fantasies 'should' look like. I'm just more comfortable with my non-normative fantasies than some people. A fantasy like this can be really scary for people to learn about - and also to have! But I think many people reading this fic have had some kind of sexual fantasy that made them worry about their mental health. And that's okay. The human brain is weird, and we can't always predict or control what turns us on. All we can do is control our behavior, and make sure our real-life relationships are ethical, and our sexual play is consensual.

Last point: One purpose of this fic is to help those who have this particular kink know that they're not alone. I'm not advocating for people to become interested in this kink. I'm writing for those who already have this kink, especially those who are terrified about it, like I used to be. It's a kink that is stigmatized both among people who struggle with their weight, and people who identify as kinky. But many people - like me - have known this kink was part of them since puberty. Fortunately, people are becoming less afraid to talk about weight-gain and fat-centric kink on the internet, at least within communities like Fantasy Feeder, Grommr, Dimensions Magazine Forums, and Tumblr. The more we talk about this kink outside of these communities, the more we can expand peoples' ideas about sexuality. Even if I have to get abuse from commenters for it, I know it's valuable. In the month of August, 3,345 individual visitors came and read this story. That's 3,345 people who may not have heard of this kink before. Less than half of those visitors get to chapter two, as you might guess, and there's significant attrition afterwards. But at this point, every update I get at least two hundred visitors per chapter. Isn't that cool? I had no idea this story would get so much attention.


	26. Chapter 26

She awoke later in the morning to the feeling of his urgent kisses gently running up and down her neck.

"Mmm," she said, and swatted at him gently. "I won't be getting up unless there's coffee."

With an exaggerated sigh, he heaved himself out of bed and padded to the kitchenette, where she heard him fill the coffee-pot with water and set it to boil.

She drifted back into luxurious unconsciousness, where she found herself dreaming. She was at least a hundred pounds fatter herself, and she was thoroughly engaged in the task of taking all his clothes off and fucking all five-hundred pounds of him in the Great Hall on the staff table, in front of everyone. Their reasons for choosing that table were apparently that it was the only table in the castle that could support him. She thrilled at the sight of all the gaping mouths of students and staff, and proceeded to exhibit very seductively what kinds of pleasurable things she liked to do to him.

His dick was almost in her mouth when the scent of strong coffee awoke her, and the flesh-and-blood three-hundred-twenty-four-plus-pound Snape was standing in front of her, sipping his own brew with one hand and hovering another cup under her nose.

"Damn," she said with a frustrated grin, "I was in a great dream."

"Mm," was all he said in response, and seated himself gingerly in her desk chair, which looked a bit frail underneath him. He looked at her with the kind of look of a person who is in pain, but trying to ignore it.

"I suppose I'll be wanting a new chair soon," said Hermione, sitting up and drawing the bedclothes closer around her, picking up the cup. "It's better suited to the frame of someone like McGonagall than you or I."

He shrugged, and the chair squeaked its protest at having someone so heavy upon it.

"Also," Hermione went on, "you look like hell. Are you feeling at all better?"

He tried to smile and looked out the window at the rain. "Slightly. Probably will be back to normal by evening."

"Did you sleep more?" she asked, and he shook his head negative. "You must have, just a little bit," she said with a smile, "I heard you snoring."

"Oh." He didn't seem particularly invested in the conversation. "Perhaps. For a few moments."

He stood up and went to stand at the window, where he took a few deep breaths.

"What does it feel like?" she asked, easing herself out of bed, the blankets around her, her coffee in her hand.

"What does *what* feel like?" he responded testily, clearly trying to dodge the question.

She joined him at the window. The rain was heavy this morning, the clouds dark overhead and thunder echoing in the distance. The trees waved, their browning leaves falling with every gust of wind.

"Your pain?" she asked after a solemn sip of her coffee.

He shook his head, as if not believing that she wanted to know. "To some extent, it's like over-acute consciousness."

"What does that mean?" she asked thoughtfully.

He made a noise of disappointment. "Have you not read, *Notes from Underground*?"

She thought about it. "Who's that written by?"

He smiled thinly. "Dostoyevsky."

She shook her head. "No, he's a Muggle. I've never prioritized reading Muggle literary fiction. If I read Muggle books, they're generally nonfiction. There's too much knowledge out there for me to spend much time reading for fun."

"Alas," Snape said, and suddenly said, in a low, poetic sort of voice, "Well: It's a 'sort of secret abnormal, despicable enjoyment, acutely conscious that that day I had committed a loathsome action again, that what was done could never be undone, and secretly, inwardly gnawing, gnawing at myself for it, tearing and consuming myself till at last the bitterness turned into a sort of shameful accursed sweetness, and at last—into positive real enjoyment!'" He sighed. "Russians. They have such insight into my condition."

She put down her coffee and draped her arms around him, wrapping him in the blanket as well. His muscles were stiff to the touch, but halfheartedly returned the embrace.

"It's somewhat ironic," he went on miserably. "My mind gnaws on itself. I gnaw on anything I can get in my mouth. Possibly there's a correlation, on a metaphysical level."

She didn't have much of a response. "I mean, if you want to think of it that way, you can," she said, "but… I mean… I gnaw on everything I can, and I don't have the same issue."

This was a lie, though Hermione herself was loathe to admit it. The sensation of her mind gnawing on itself was something she was acutely familiar with, particularly from her school days, but also as recently as her time in the Ministry. She wondered if it had really gone away, or if it was just hidden out of sight lately because of spending so much time caring about Snape and his mental health.

"Really," he said acerbically, challenging her. He seemed to call her bluff, and he stared into her eyes for a few moments, then turned to look out the window again and sipped his coffee again with a facial expression of resignation.

"I… I mean," Hermione said, reluctantly, "I'm anxious sometimes…"

He snorted, and finished the last of his coffee. "Sometimes?"

"...I thought I was doing better," she said grumpily. "And you definitely haven't seen me at my worst."

"Maybe because I'm actually competent at doing what you want me to do, compared to Potter and Weasley," Snape said with a grimace.

"Now, that's not fair," Hermione said, putting the blanket on his shoulders and untangling herself from it. She went to the closet, arms crossed to keep warm, and put on the dressing-gown he'd given her. His eyes followed her nude body as she did so, clearly admiring her figure.

"I think I'm right," he said with a self-satisfied grumble, watching as she belted the gown. "You trust me to execute projects without constant oversight. I don't think you've ever been able to do that with them."

"Maybe not," she conceded, picking up her coffee and sitting on the window-seat. "But I don't like where this conversation is headed, Severus."

He opened his mouth to respond, but thought better of it and shook his head. "You're right. I… apologize."

"It's all right," she said with a sigh. She went back to the desk and picked up some papers. "So, are we going to talk more about what happened earlier this morning?"

"I don't see a need to," he said crisply, staring into sky.

"All right," she returned, and felt her stomach rumble. "Breakfast?"

"More like elevenses," he said, finally retreating from the window, looking as refreshed as was possible for him. He came over to where she sat at her desk, leaned over, and draped his arms around her as she opened a week's worth of neglected correspondence, kissing her earlobe and holding her close to his chest.

"Then let's," said Hermione, turning to kiss him on the lips and standing.

He cuddled her in his arms for a few moments.

"Let's be moderate," he said hesitantly. "I don't need to be stuffed this morning."

She pressed her cheek against his soft chest flab and rubbed his delicious round belly. "I understand," she said, snuggling him close, and he kissed the top of her head.

Then she led him into the kitchenette, where she began to scavenge for something that was remotely edible. Both of them were moderately spooked, it seemed, from the incident with Lowly, and wanted to avoid interaction with the elves for the time being.

Hermione did find some bread mix, and she made impromptu hot cakes. In accordance with his stated desires, she did not cook an exorbitant number - three for herself, five for Severus. There was peach-orange preserves and broken chocolate bits for flavor.

There was something different about cooking for him, compared to just eating what the elves brought them. The smells filled the kitchen, making both of them hungry many minutes before the food was close to ready.

Severus set the table with the cheap second-hand flatware from the cabinets - left over from whoever had lived in the flat last. Then he made himself incredibly unuseful in the kitchen, wrapping himself around her as she stood at the stove, kissing her and fondling her soft bits.

"Please," she said with a smirk as he licked the sensitive place under her ear, "don't you have something better to do?"

"You tell me," he replied salaciously, rubbing her belly with one hand and snaking his other hand under the satin robe to her left breast.

She firmly removed his hand from her breast and settled it on her waist so that she could flip the cakes in the pan with the spatula. "You're in the way," she said with some element of teasing.

In response, he sank onto the floor, his hands gliding down her hips, thighs, and legs as he went, and then he stopped touching her and seemed to contort himself into an awkward position on the floor. She twisted her head around her and saw that he was folded in half - he'd propped up his legs on the opposite counter, and was otherwise laying flat on the floor, looking up her skirt between her legs, his head between her feet.

She stepped carefully aside to see his expression; he was smirking, and his eyes were dancing.

"Was that still 'in the way'?" he asked with a coquettish pout, and she gently kicked his shoulder with her stockinged foot.

"I think you know the answer to that question," she said, "now how on earth did you get into that position?"

"I'm not entirely sure," he responded, "but I am sure I won't be able to get out of it without your gracious assistance."

"Not while I'm cooking," she said firmly, and responded by putting down the spatula and grabbing his hands, and (with great effort) dragging his fat arse out of the kitchenette to the living room, where there was a bit more space, and she laughed as he protested feebly.

"Now, stay," she commanded, and went back to the kitchen, but she took her robe off and left it on a chair in the living room.

"I think you forgot something," he said, not getting up from where he lay lazily on the floor.

"For your own safety," she responded with a laugh. "You can gawk at my lady bits all you like without risking a pan falling on your face."

He snorted. "I was *not* gawking."

"Well, what were you doing, then?"

"Simply *appreciating.*"

"Appreciate this," she responded, and grabbed a spoonful of marmalade and took it to where he lay. She spread her legs and crouched over him, giving him a full view while offering the marmalade to his lips. He licked it up greedily from the spoon, then arched his neck and started licking her pussy with the hunger of a starving man.

"Mm," he murmured, readjusting himself to get a better angle, "You're so wet."

"It's just thinking about how nice and large you are," she whispered with a gasp as she felt her body preparing to orgasm. "And how much you're going to enjoy the food I'm making for you."

"Well then," he said, a kind of thrilling satisfaction in his eyes. His hand absently wandered to rest on his large belly. "I suppose you really do like this, don't you." He seemed as if he could barely believe it.

She began to feel a cramp in her upper thigh, so she stood straight again. "Yes," she said simply, "I do enjoy it."

Then she went back to the stove, and barely caught the hotcake in time before it began to burn.

Soon enough breakfast was on the table, and Snape was upright again and in a chair, and Hermione had served them both, and they were eating hungrily.

"This is perfect," Hermione complimented herself as Snape ploughed through his food. He nodded amiably in response, swallowed, and reached for the orange preserves to lather on the next layer of cake.

"Mmm, more like Exceeds Expectations," he responded with a humorous glint in his eye.

"What," Hermione said in mock dismay, "so you don't want the rest, I take it?"

She reached for his plate and he moved it protectively towards him. "That is *not* what I said," he said with a mischievous grin. "It merely could be improved."

"How," Hermione asked, "could it possibly be improved?"

"In the states," he responded, filling his mouth with blatant pleasure, "they use warm maple syrup. And butter."

"I see," Hermione said, "so I fall short of American standards. That's a low bar to miss, isn't it?"

He grinned. "So you would imagine. But haven't you seen how fat Americans are? They must have something going well for them or they'd look quite different."

Hermione rolled her eyes and leaned forward. "So now America is the height of culinary offerings. It's clear you enjoyed yourself there," she murmured, grabbing a hold of his fat roll and jiggling it in her hands.

He nodded, his face growing red. He took another bite of his food, and a smudge of marmalade stuck to his chin. He reached out his tongue to lick it up, and then wiped his face with the back of his hand as he took another huge bite.

The way his face curled into a state of pure satisfaction at that moment was so intriguing and delightful. She massaged the hill of his upper gut, which was pooching out of the thick rolls of fat around his middle, and he moaned in response, his eyes closed.

Then Hermione moved back to take another bite from her own plate, and as she did so, her hands brushed against her plumpening thighs, sending them into jiggling waves. "Oh, god," she murmured, and spread her legs urgently, and began to stimulate herself right there on her chair. She was so turned on, she could not wait for Snape to finish his food.

He seemed torn for just the slightest of moments between eating food and eating something else, but swiftly he was on the floor, grasping on the legs of the chair and tonguing her in the most convincing way possible.

She moaned and swore as he used his well-trained tongue on her.

Oh gods, he was ravishing her. There was quite a bit of benefit to his mouth being the most exercised area of his body - there seemed to be no end to his licking and sucking. As she bucked her hips, he put two chubby fingers in her vagina and rubbed with them fiercely, and she couldn't open her eyes because of the amount of pleasure she was feeling.

He kept at it until she patted him on the head and collapsed against the back of the chair, at which point he was panting for breath and clearly exhausted. He sat back on his wide arse and breathed deeply.

Hermione slipped off the chair to join him on the floor, where she nestled herself in his lap and reached up to massage the corners of his jaw.

"That's… so nice," he murmured once he had regained his breath.

"Hope you're ready to finish your food," Hermione said firmly, accio'ing the plate and fork from the table. "You've got to keep your strength up."

"Mm," he said, opening his mouth.

Hermione put the hot cakes in his mouth, letting him slowly chew between bites. The sheer euphoria he was experiencing was tangible in every smacking noise of his lips, every gurgle of his stomach, and every little moan he had with every bite.

Alas, too soon it was all gone. It was clear to her that he was still hungry to a degree, but he patted his tummy and rubbed it.

"Are you still hungry?" she asked, "you can finish mine, if you want."

"No," he said, leaning back against the wall, "I'm quite satisfied. You need to finish your own food. I have no desire to see you become a formless waif before my eyes, if I have anything to do with it."

"I see," she said with a laugh, and took her plate from the table, and a pillow from the main sofa, and sat with him on the floor. She leaned back and accepted as he served her bite after bite of the rich cakes.

As it happened, she was quite glad that he hadn't accepted her offer of her leftovers, because she ate every bite and still was painfully hungry afterwards.

"Is there more in the kitchen?" he asked as he eased himself up off the floor. She shook her head.

"No, and there's barely anything else either."

Snape didn't believe her, and went to look for himself. Hermione cradled her stomach, which was begging for more food, and she took a look at herself. Her tummy was distinctly convex, finally claiming a victory in how it began to spill out from under her breasts, and was finally beginning to look substantial. As she curled up, her belly squished into adorable rolls of fat, perfect for grabbing onto. Her breasts rested on them, heavy and squishy. But her belly was what was blocking up her line of vision when she looked down - a refreshing change from her breasts occupying that position of prestige.

Snape came back into the room empty-handed.

"You're right," he said with tangible disappointment in his voice. He extended his hands to her, and helped her up. She mopingly went to the sofa and sat upon it.

"Oh," he breathed as he looked at her, his mouth clearly watering, and she looked down at herself. Her belly spread across her thighs and made for an inviting plump lump of fat. He sat down next to her and wrapped his arms around her, nestling his plump fingers in the crevice formed between her tummy and her thigh.

"You're so delicious," he whispered, kissing her cheek. "So, it appears you are still hungry?"

"Quite," she said, grumpy. "Let's go to town, shall we?"

He took a deep breath and did not respond for a few moments. He seemed entirely too preoccupied by touching her soft, supple skin. The way he gazed at her belly was far too telling. His fingers ran over the stretch marks there and massaged them gently.

"Snape?" she said, and he jerked slightly, startled.

"Erm. Yes. Madam Puddifoot's?" he asked, and it seemed that there was an element of fear in his voice.

"Not really," she said with a smirk, "that seems cruel and unusual torture. What about the pub in town? The one that isn't Aberforth's."

He did not answer her right away, so she intuited that he wasn't in favor of this plan.

"Erm," she asked, "is there somewhere else you're thinking of?"

He waited several long moments, his chin on her shoulder, arms wrapped around her, continuing to finger her soft flesh. Finally, with some amount of embarrassment, he confessed, "Well… erm… I really would prefer the former."

Hermione was so surprised she laughed. "Are you *really* saying you'd prefer to go to Madam Puddifoot's over a quiet anonymous pub?"

He looked uncomfortable, and quickly retracted, "It's fine. The pub is fine."

Hermione just laughed. "No, I'm entirely ambivalent. I mean, if it were a Hogsmeade weekend, I wouldn't be keen on going to Madam Puddifoot's, but if you have a preference…"

"It *is* a Hogsmeade weekend," Snape said, standing up and going to mess with some papers on the coffee table as an excuse to not look at her. "And I would like to go there, even so."

Hermione grinned broadly. "Are you serious?"

"Yes," he said testily, as if insulted, not looking at her. "I have it on good authority that it's a pre-requisite to becoming someone's someone, when you're at Hogwarts."

She felt like she couldn't stop smiling. "I can't believe it," she said with as gentle a taunt as she could muster. "Severus Snape, you're asking me to Madam Puddifoot's. On a public date."

He still wasn't looking at her. "They have good coffee."

"I… I suppose," she said with a smile. "I don't know that anyone's asked me to go there before."

"Then let me be the first," he said solemnly, turning to stare at her.

Their eyes met, and there was such an intensity to his gaze that it nearly frightened her. There were so many emotions that he seemed to be permitting to the surface of his eyes - trust, possessiveness, desire, pride, and fear.

Fear of what, she had to wonder. But fundamentally pride seemed to be the most overwhelming emotion she could read, and she stood up and let her lips melt into his.

After a few moments of snogging, she let go and patted his fine round rump.

"Give me a moment to dress," she said, practically bouncing into the next room.


End file.
